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Books by Lady Gregory

Translations of Irish Epics t CUCHULAIN OF MUIRTHEMNE

GODS AND FIGHTING MEN
SAINTS AND WONDERS

Translations and Folk Lorei

POETS AND DREAMERS
THE KILTARTAN HISTORY

BOOK
THE KILTARTAN WONDER

BOOK

Dramatic Works t SEVEN SHORT PLAYS

THE IMAGE

THE KILTARTAN MOLIERE
IRISH FOLK-HISTORY PLAYS

From a painting by
Gerald F. Kelly

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New Comedies

By

Lady Gregory

The Bogie Men— The Full Moon— Coats

Darner's Gold— McDonough's

Wife

G. P. Putnam's Sons

New York and London
Gbe IKntcfcerbocfeer press

1913

VJT °

Copyright 19 13

BY

LADY GREGORY

These plays have heen copyrighted and published simultaneously in the
United States and Great Britain.

All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages.

All acting rights, both professional and amateur, are reserved, in the United
States, Great Britain, and all countries of the Copyright Union, by the author.
Performances forbidden and right of representation reserved.

Application for the right of performing these plays or reading them in public
should be made to Samuel French, 28 West 38th Street, New York City, or 26
Southampton Street, Strand, London.

Ube ImCclictbocfcer ptcw, Hew fiort

OCI.A332868

ro

W

TO THE RT. HON. W. F. BAILEY
COUNSELLOR, PEACEMAKER, FRIEND

ABBEY THEATRE, I913.

CONTENTS

The Bogie Men .

PAGE
I

The Full Moon .

• 25

Coats

• 65

Damer's Gold

• 89

McDonough's Wife .

• 133

Notes

• 155

THE BOGIE MEN

Persons

Taig O'Harragha j . . . both chimney
Darby Melody I . . . sweeps

THE BOGIE MEN

Scene: A Shed near where a coach stops. Darby
comes in. Has a tin can of water in one
hand, a sweep's bag and brush in the other.
He lays down bag on an empty box and puts
can on the floor. Is taking a showy suit of
clothes out of bag and admiring them and
is about to put them on when he hears some
one coming and hurriedly puts them back
into the bag.

Taig: {At door.) God save all here!

Darby: God save you. A sweep is it? (Sus-
piciously.) What brought you following me?

Taig: Why would n't I be a sweep as good as
yourself?

Darby: It is not one of my own trade I came
looking to meet with. It is a shelter I was search-
ing out, where I could put on a decent appearance,
rinsing my head and my features in a tin can of
water.

Taig: Is it long till the coach will be passing
by the cross-road beyond?

Darby: Within about a half an hour they were
telling me.

a

4 The Bogie Men

Taig: There does be much people travelling
to this place?

Darby: I suppose there might, and it being the
high road from the town of Ennis.

Taig: It should be in this town you follow
your trade?

Darby: It is not in the towns I do be.

Taig: There 's nothing but the towns, since
the farmers in the country clear out their own
chimneys with a bush under and a bush overhead.

Darby: I travel only gentlemen's houses.

Taig: There does be more of company in the
streets than you 'd find on the bare road.

Darby: It is n't easy get company for a person
has but two empty hands.

Taig: Wealth to be in the family it is all one
nearly with having a grip of it in your own palm.

Darby: I wish to the Lord it was the one thing.

Taig: You to know what I know

Darby: What is it that you know?

Taig: It is dealing out cards through the
night time I will be from this out, and making bets
on racehorses and fighting-cocks through all the
hours of the day.

Darby: I would sooner to be sleeping in feathers
and to do no hand's turn at all, day or night.

Taig: If I came paddling along through every
place this day and the road hard under my feet,
it is likely I will have my choice way leaving it.

The Bogie Men 5

Darby: How is that now?

Taig: A horse maybe and a car or two horses,
or maybe to go in the coach, and I myself sitting
alongside the man came in it.

Darby: Is it that he is taking you into his
service?

Taig: Not at all! And I being of his own
family and his blood.

Darby: Of his blood now?

Taig: A relation I have, that is full up of
money and of every whole thing.

Darby: A relation?

Taig: A first cousin, by the side of the mother.

Darby: Well, I am not without having a first
cousin of my own.

Taig: I would n't think he 'd be much. To
be listening to my mother giving out a report of
my one's ways, you would maybe believe it is no
empty skin of a man he is.

Darby: My own mother was not without giv-
ing out a report of my man's ways.

Taig: Did she see him?

Darby: She did, I suppose, or the thing
was near him. She never was tired talking of
him.

Taig: It is often my own mother would have
Dermot pictured to myself.

Darby: It is often the likeness of Timothy was
laid down to me by the teaching of my mother's

6 The Bogie Men

mouth, since I was able to walk the floor. She
thought the whole world of him.

Taig: A bright scholar she laid Dermot down
to be. A good doing fellow for himself. A man
would be well able to go up to his promise.

Darby: That is the same account used to be
given out of Timothy.

Taig: To some trade of merchandise it is
likely Dermot was reared. A good living man
that was never any cost on his mother.

Darby: To own an estate before he would go
far in age Timothy was on the road.

Taig: To have the handling of silks and
jewelleries and to be free of them, and of suits
and the making of suits, that is the way with the
big merchants of the world.

Darby: It is letting out his land to grass
farmers a man owning acres does be making his
profit.

Taig: A queer thing you to be the way you
are, and he to be an upstanding gentleman.

Darby: It is the way I went down ; my mother
used to be faulting me and I not being the equal
of him. Tormenting and picking at me and
shouting me on the road. ' ' You thraneen, ' ' she 'd
say, "you little trifle of a son! You stumbling
over the threshold as if in slumber, and Timothy
being as swift as a bee!"

Taig: So my own mother used to be going on

The Bogie Men 7

at myself, and be letting out shrieks and screeches.
"What now would your cousin Dermot be
saying?" every time there would come a new
rent in my rags.

Darby: " Little he *d think of you, " she 'd say;
"you without body and puny, not fit to lift scraws
from off the field, and Timothy bringing in profit
to his mother's hand, and earning prizes and
rewards."

Taig: The time it would fail me to follow my
book or to say off my A,B, ab, to draw Dermot
down on me she would. "Before he was up to
your age," she would lay down, "he was fitted to
say off Catechisms and to read newses. You have
no more intellect beside him, " she 'd say, "than a
chicken has its head yet in the shell."

Darby: "Let you hold up the same as Timothy, "
she 'd give out, and I to stoop my shoulders the
time the sun would prey upon my head. "He
that is as straight and as clean as a green rush on
the brink of the bog."

Taig: "It is you will be fit but to blow the
bellows," my mother would say, "the time
Dermot will be forging gold." I let on the book
to have gone astray on me at the last. Why
would I go crush and bruise myself under a weight
of learning, and there being one in the family well
able to take my cost and my support whatever
way it might go? Dermot that would feel my

8 The Bogie Men

keep no more than the lake would feel the weight
of the duck.

Darby: I seen no use to be going sweating after
farmers, striving to plough or to scatter seed, when
I never could come anear Timothy in any sort of
a way, and he, by what she was saying, able to
thrash out a rick of oats in the day. So it fell out
I was thrown on the ways of the world, having no
skill in any trade, till there came a demand for me
going aloft in chimneys, I being as thin as a needle
and shrunken with weakness and want of food.

Taig: I got my living for a while by miracle
and trafficking in rabbit skins, till a sweep from
Limerick bound me to himself one time I was
skinned with the winter. Great cruelty he gave
me till I ran from him with the brush and the bag,
and went foraging around for myself.

Darby: So am I going around by myself. I
never had a comrade lad.

Taig: My mother that would hit me a crack if
I made free with any of the chaps of the village,
saying that would not serve me with Dermot, that
had a good top-coat and was brought up to manners
and behaviour.

Darby: My own mother that drew down
Timothy on me the time she 'd catch me going
with the lads that had their pleasure out of the
world, slashing tops and pebbles, throwing and
going on with games.

The Bogie Men 9

Taig: I took my own way after, fitting myself
for sports and funning, against the time the rich
man would stretch out his hand. Going with
wild lads and poachers I was, till they left me
carrying their snares in under my coat, that I
was lodged for three months in the gaol.

Darby: The neighbours had it against me
after, I not being friendly when we were small.
The most time I am going the road it is a lonesome
shadow I cast before me.

Taig: {Looking oat of the door.) It is on this
day I will be making acquaintance with himself.
My mother that sent him a request to come meet
me in this town on this day, it being the first of
the summer.

Darby: My own mother that did no less,
telling me she got word from Timothy he would
come meet here with myself. It is certain he will
bring me into his house, she having wedded
secondly with a labouring man has j>ot a job at
Golden Hill in Lancashire. I would not recognise
him beyond any other one.

Taig: I would recognise the signs of a big man.
I wish I was within in his kitchen. There is a
pinch of hunger within in my heart.

Darby: So there is within in myself.

Taig: Is there nothing at all in the bag?

Darby: It is a bit of a salted herring.

Taig: Why would n't you use it?

io The Bogie Men

Darby: I would be delicate coming before him
and the smell of it to be on me, and all the grand
meats will be at his table.

Taig: {Showing a bottle.) The full of a pint
I have of porter, that fell from a tinker's car.

Darby: I wonder you would not swallow it
down for to keep courage in your mind.

Taig: It is what I am thinking, I to take it
fasting, it might put confusion and wildness in my
head. I would wish, and I meeting with him, my
wits to be of the one clearness with his own. It
is not long to be waiting; it is in claret I will be
quenching my thirst to-night, or in punch !

Darby: {Looking out.) I am nearly in dread
meeting Timothy, fearing I will not be pleasing
to him, and I not acquainted with his habits.

Taig: I would not be afeard, and Dermot to
come sparkling in, and seven horses in his coach.

Darby: What way can I come before him at
all? I would be better pleased you to personate
me and to stand up to him in my place.

Taig: Any person to put orders on me, or to
bid me change my habits, I *d give no heed ! I 'd
stand up to him in the spite of his teeth !

Darby: If it was n't for the hearthfires to be
slackened with the springtime, and my work to be
lessened with the strengthening of the sun, I *d
sooner not see him till another moon is passed, or
two moons.

The Bogie Men n

Taig: He to bid me read out the news of the
world, taking me to be a scholar, I 'd give him
words that are in no books ! I'd give him newses !
I 'd knock rights out of him or any one I ever
seen.

Darby: I could speak only of my trade. The
boundaries of the world to be between us, I 'm
thinking I 'd never ask to go cross them at all.

Taig: He to go into Court swearing witnesses
and to bring me along with him to face the judges
and the whole troop of the police, I 'd go bail I '11
be no way daunted or scared.

Darby: What way can I keep company with
him? I that was partly reared in the workhouse.
And he having a star on his hat and a golden apple
in his hand. He will maybe be bidding me to
scour myself with soapy water all the Sundays
and Holy days of the year ! I tell you I am getting
low hearted. I pray to the Lord to forgive me
where I did not go under the schoolmaster's rod !

Taig: I that will shape crampy words the same
as any scholar at all! I'll let on to be a master of
learning and of Latin !

Darby: Ah, what letting on? It is Timothy
will look through me the same as if my eyes were
windows, and my thoughts standing as plain as
cattle under the risen sun ! It is easier letting on
to have knowledge than to put on manners and
behaviour.

12 The Bogie Men

Taig: Ah, what 's manners but to refuse no
man a share of your bite and to keep back your
hand from throwing stones?

Darby: I tell you I 'm in shivers ! My heart
that is shaking like an ivy leaf! My bones that
are loosened and slackened in the similitude of a
rope of tow! I 'd sooner meet with a lion of the
wilderness or the wickedest wind of the hills! I
thought it never would come to pass. I 'd sooner
go into the pettiest house, the wildest home and
the worst ! Look at here now. Let me stop along
with yourself. I never let out so much of my
heart to any one at all till this day. It *s a pity
we should be parted !

Taig: Is it to come following after me you
would, before the face of Dermot?

Darby: I 'd feel no dread and you being at my
side.

Taig: Dermot to see me in company with the
like of you ! I would n't for the whole world he
should be aware I had ever any traffic with
chimneys or with soot. It would not be for his
honour you to draw anear him!

Darby: {Indignantly.) No but Timothy that
would make objection to yourself ! He that would
whip the world for manners and behaviour !

Taig: Dermot that is better again. He that
would write and dictate to you at the one
time!

The Bogie Men 13

Darby: What is that beside owning tillage, and
to need no education, but to take rents into your
hand?

Taig: I would never believe him to own an
estate.

Darby: Why wouldn't he own it? "The
biggest thing and the grandest," my mother
would say when I would ask her what was he
doing.

Taig: Ah, what could be before selling out
silks and satins. There is many an estated lord
could n't reach you out a fourpenny bit.

Darby: The grandest house around the seas
of Ireland he should have, beautifully made up!
You would nearly go astray in it! It would n't
be known what you could make of it at all ! You
would n't have it walked in a month !

Taig: What is that beside having a range of
shops as wide maybe as the street beyond?

Darby: A house would be the capital of the
county ! One door for the rich, one door for the
common ! Velvet carpets rolled up, the way there
would no dust from the chimney fall upon them.
A hundred would n't be many standing in a corner
of that place! A high bed of feathers, curled hair
mattresses. A cover laid on it would be flowery
with blossoms of gold !

Taig: Muslin and gauze, cambric and linen!
Canton crossbar! Glass windows full up of

14 The Bogie Men

ribbons as gaudy as the crooked bow in the sky!
Sovereigns and shillings in and out as plenty as to
riddle rape seed. Sure them that do be selling in
shops die leaving millions.

Darby: Your man is not so good as mine in his
office or in his billet.

Taig: There is the horn of the coach. Get out
now till I '11 prepare myself. He might chance to
come seeking for me here.

Darby: There *s a lather of sweat on myself.
That *s my tin can of water!

Taig: {Holding can from him.) Get out I tell
you! I would n't wish him to feel the smell of
you on the breeze.

Darby: {Almost crying.) You are a mean
savage to go keeping from me my tin can and my
rag!

Taig: Go wash yourself at the pump can't you ?

Darby: That we may never be within the same
four walls again, or come under the lintel of the
one door! {He goes out.)

Taig: {Calling after him while he takes a suit
of clothes from his bag.) I 'm not like yourself ! I
have good clothes to put on me, what you have n't
got ! A body- coat my mother made out — she lost
up to three shillings on it, — and a hat — and a
speckled blue cravat. {He hastily throws off his
sweep* s smock and cap, and puts on clothes. As he
does he sings:)

The Bogie Men 15

All round my hat I wore a green ribbon,
All round my hat for a year and a day;
And if any one asks me the reason I wore it
I '11 say that my true love went over the sea!

All in my hat I will stick a blue feather
The same as the birds do be up in the tree;
And if you would ask me the reason I do it
I '11 tell you my true love is come back to me!

(He washes his face and wipes it, looking at him-
self in the tin can. He catches sight of a straw hat
passing window.) Who is that? A gentleman?
(He draws back.)

(Darby comes in. He has changed his
clothes and wears a straw hat and light
coat and trousers. He is looking for a
necktie which he had dropped and picks
up. His back is turned to Taig who is
standing at the other door.)
Taig: (Awed.) It cannot be that you are
Dermot Melody?

Darby: My father's name was Melody sure
enough, till he lost his life in the year of the black
potatoes.

Taig: It is yourself I am come here purposely
to meet with.

Darby: You should be my mother's sister's son
so, Timothy O'Harragha.

16 The Bogie Men

Taig: {Sheepishly.) I am that. I am sorry
indeed it failed me to be out before you in the
street.

Darby: Oh, I would n't be looking for that
much from you. {They are trying to keep their
backs to each other, and to rub their faces cleaner.)

Taig: I would n't wish to be anyway trouble-
some to you. I am badly worthy of you.

Darby: It is in dread I am of being troublesome
to yourself.

Taig: Oh, it would be hard for you to be that.
Nothing you could put on me would be any hard-
ship at all, if it was to walk steel thistles.

Darby: You have a willing heart surely.

Taig: Any little job at all I could do for
you

Darby: All I would ask of you is to give me
my nourishment and my bite.

Taig: I will do that. I will be your serving
man.

Darby: Ah, you are going too far in that.

Taig: It 's my born duty to do that much.
I '11 bring your dinner before you, if I can be any-
way pleasing to you; you that is used to wealthy
people.

Darby: Indeed I was often in a house having
up to twenty chimneys.

Taig: You are a rare good man, nothing short
of it, and you going as you did so high in the world.

The Bogie Men 17

Darby: Any person would go high before he
would put his hand out through the top of a
chimney.

Taig: Having full and plenty of every good
thing.

Darby: I saw nothing so plentiful as soot.
There is not the equal of it nourishing a garden.
It would turn every crop blue, being so good.

Taig: {Weeping.) It is a very unkind thing
to go drawing chimneys down on me and soot,
and you having all that ever was !

Darby: Little enough I have or ever had.

Taig: To be casting up my trade against me,
I being poor and hungry, and you having
coins and tokens from all the goldpits of the
world.

Darby: I wish I ever handled a coin of gold
in my lifetime.

Taig: To speak despisingly, not pitiful. And
I thinking the chimney sweeping would be forgot
and not reproached to me, if you have handled the
fooleries and watches of the world, that you don't
know the end of your riches !

Darby: I am maybe getting your meaning
wrong, your tongue being a little hard and sharp
because you are Englified, but I am without new
learnments and so I speak flat.

Taig: You to have the millions of King Solo-
mon, you have no right to be putting reflections

1 8 The Bogie Men

on me! I would never behave that way, and
housefuls to fall into my hand.

Darby: You are striving to put ridicule on me
and to make a fool of me. That is a very un-
seemly thing to do ! I that did not ask to go hide
the bag or the brush.

Taig: There you are going on again. Is it to
the customers in your shops you will be giving
out that it was my lot to go through the world as a
sweep?

Darby: Customers and shops ! Will you stop
your funning? Let you quit mocking and making
a sport of me ! That is very bad acting behaviour.

Taig: Striving to blacken my face again at
the time I had it washed pure white. You surely
have a heart of marble.

Darby: What way at all can you be putting
such a rascally say out of your mouth? I '11 take
no more talk from you, I to be twenty-two degrees
lower than the Hottentots !

Taig: If you are my full cousin Dermot Melody
I '11 make you quit talking of soot !

Darby: I '11 take no more talk from yourself!

Taig: Have a care now!

Darby: Have a care yourself!

{Each gives the other a push. They stumble
and fall, sitting facing one another.
Darby's hat falls off.)

Taig: Is it you it is?

The Bogie Men 19

Darby: Who else would it be?

Taig: What call had you letting on to be
Dermot Melody?

Darby: What letting on? Dermot is my full
name, but Darby is the name I am called.

Taig: Are you a man owning riches and shops
and merchandise?

Darby: I am not, or anything of the sort.

Taig: Have you teems of money in the bank?

Darby: If I had would I be sitting on this
floor?

Taig: You thief you !

Darby: Thief yourself! Turn around now till
I will measure your features and your face.
Yourself is it! Is it personating my cousin
Timothy you are?

Taig: I am personating no one but myself.

Darby: You letting on to be an estated magis-
trate and my own cousin and such a great genera-
tion of a man. And you not owning so much as
a rood of ridges !

Taig: Covering yourself with choice clothing
for to deceive me and to lead me astray !

Darby: Putting on your head a fine glossy hat
and I thinking you to have come with the spring-
tide, the way you had luck through your life !

Taig: Letting on to be Dermot Melody ! You
that are but the cull and the weakling of a race!
It is a queer game you played on me and a crooked

20 The Bogie Men

game. I never would have brought my legs so far
to meet with the sooty likes of you !

Darby: Letting on to be my poor Timothy
O'Harragha!

Taig: I never was called but Taig. Timothy
was a sort of a Holy day name.

Darby: Where now are our two cousins? Or
is it that the both of us are cracked?

Taig: It is, or our mothers before us.

Darby: My mother was a McGarrity woman
from Loughrea. It is Mary was her Christened
name.

Taig: So was my own mother of the McGar-
rity s. It is sisters they were sure enough.

Darby: That makes us out to be full cousins
in the heel.

Taig: You no better than myself! And the
prayers I used to be saying for you, and you but
a sketch and an excuse of a man !

Darby: Ah, I am thinking people put more in
their prayers than was ever put in them by God.

Taig: Our mothers picturing us to one another
as if we were the best in the world.

Darby: Lies I suppose they were drawing down,
for to startle us into good behaviour.

Taig: Would n't you say now mothers to be a
terror?

Darby: And we nothing at all after but two
chimney sweepers and two harmless drifty lads.

The Bogie Men 21

Taig: Where is the great quality dinner your-
self was to give me, having seven sorts of dressed
meat? Pullets and bacon I was looking for, and
to fall on an easy life.

Darby: Gone like the clouds of the winter's fog.
We rose out of it the same as we went in.

Taig: We have nothing to do but to starve
with the hunger, and you being as bare as myself.

Darby: We are in a bad shift surely. We
must perish with the want of support. It is one
of the tricks of the world does be played upon the
children of Adam.

Taig: All we have to do is to crawl to the poor-
house gate. Or to go dig a pit in the graveyard,
as it is short till we '11 be stretched there with the
want of food.

Darby: Food is it? There is nothing at this
time against me eating my bit of a herring.
{Seizes it and takes a bite.)

Taig: Give me a divide of it.

Darby: Give me a drop of your own porter so,
is in the bottle. There need be no dread on you
now, of you being no match for your grand man.

Taig: That is so. (Drinks.) I '11 strive no
more to fit myself for high quality relations. I am
free from patterns of high up cousins from this
out. I '11 be a pattern to myself.

Darby: I am well content being free of you,
the way you were pictured to be. I declare to

22 The Bogie Men

my goodness, the name of you put terror on me
through the whole of my lifetime, and your image
to be clogging and checking me on every side.

Taig: To be thinking of you being in the world
was a holy terror to myself. I give you my word
you came through my sleep the same as a scarecrow
or a dragon.

Darby: It is great things I will be doing from
this out, we two having nothing to cast up against
one another. To be quit of Timothy the bogie
and to get Taig for a comrade, I'mas proud as
the Crown of France !

Taig: I *m in dread of neither bumble or bag-
man or bugaboo! I will regulate things from
myself from this out.

Darby: There to be fineness of living in the
world, why would n't I make it out for myself?

Taig: It is to the harbours of America we will
work our way across the wideness of the sea. It is
well able we should be to go mounting up aloft
in ropes. Come on Darby out of this !

Darby: There is magic and mastery come into
me ! This day has put wings to my heart !

Taig: Be easy now. We are maybe not clear
of the chimneys yet.

Darby: What signifies chimneys? We '11 go
up in them till we '11 take a view of the Seven Stars !
It is out beyond the hills of Burren I will cast my
eye, till I '11 see the three gates of Heaven!

The Bogie Men 23

Taig: It *s like enough, luck will flow to you.
The way most people fail is in not keeping up the
heart. Faith, it 's well you have myself to mind
you. Gather up now your brush and your bag.

{They go to the door holding each other's hands
and singing: "All in my hat I will
cock a blue feather," etc.)

Curtain

THE FULL MOON

TO ALL SANE PEOPLE IN OR OUT OF CLOON
WHO KNOW THEIR NEIGHBOURS TO BE
NATURALLY CRACKED OR SOMEWAY QUEER
OR TO HAVE GONE WRONG IN THE HEAD.

25

Persons
Shawn Early
Bartley Fallon
Peter Tannian
Hyacinth Halvey
Mrs. Broderick
Miss Joyce
Cracked Mary
Davideen, her brother, an innocent

► ALL SANE

26

THE FULL MOON

Scene: A shed close to Cloon Station; Bartley
Fallon is sitting gloomily on a box; Hyacinth
Halvey and Shawn Early are coming in at
door.

Shawn Early: It is likely the train will not be
up to its time, and cattle being on it for the fair.
It 's best wait in the shed. Is that Bartley
Fallon? What way are you, Bartley?

Bartley Fallon: Faith, no way at all. On the
drag, on the drag; striving to put the bad times
over me.

Shawn Early: Is it business with the nine
o'clock you have?

Bartley Fallon: The wife that is gone visiting
to Tubber, and that has the door locked till such
time as she will come back on the train. And I
thought this shed a place where no bad thing
would be apt to happen me, and not to be going
through the streets, and the darkness falling.

Shawn Early: It is not long till the full moon
will be rising.

Bartley Fallon: Everything that is bad, the

falling sickness — God save the mark — or the like,

27

28 The Full Moon

should be at its worst at the full moon. I suppose
because it is the leader of the stars.

Shawn Early: Ah, what could happen any
person in the street of Cloon?

Bar thy Fallon: There might. Look at Matt
Finn, the coffin-maker, put his hand on a cage the
circus brought, and the lion took and tore it till
they stuck him with a fork you 'd rise dung with,
and at that he let it drop. And that was a man
had never quitted Cloon.

Shawn Early: I thought you might be sending
something to the fair.

Bartley Fallon: It is n't to the train I would be
trusting anything I would have to sell, where it
might be thrown off the track. And where would
be the use sending the couple of little lambs I
have? It is likely there is no one would ask me
where was I going. When the weight is not in
them, they won't carry the price. Sure, the grass
I have is no good, but seven times worse than the
road.

Shawn Early: They are saying there '11 be
good demand at the fair of Carrow to-morrow.

Hyacinth Halvey: To-morrow the fair day of
Carrow? I was not remembering that.

Bartley Fallon: Ah, there won't be many in it,
I 'm thinking. There is n't a hungrier village in
Connacht, they were telling me, and it 9s poor the
look of it as well.

The Full Moon 29

Hyacinth Halvey: To-morrow the fair day.
There will be all sorts in the streets to-night.

Bartley Fallon: The sort that will be in it will
be a bad sort — sievemakers and tramps and
neuks.

Hyacinth Halvey: The tents on the fair green ;
there will be music in it ; there was a fiddler having
no legs would set men of threescore years and of
fourscore years dancing. I can nearly hear his
tune. {He whistles " The Heather Broom. ")

Bartley Fallon: You are apt to be going there
on the train, I suppose? It is well to be you, Mr.
Halvey, having a good place in the town, and the
price of your fare, and maybe six times the price
of it, in your pocket.

Hyacinth Halvey: I did n't think of that. I
wonder could I go — for one night only — and see
what the lads are doing.

Shawn Early: Are you forgetting, Mr. Halvey,
that you are to meet his Reverence on the platform
that is coming home from drinking water at the
Spa?

Hyacinth Halvey: So I can meet him, and get
in the train after him getting out.

(Mrs. Broderick and Peter Tannian come
in.)

Mrs. Broderick: Is that Mr. Halvey is in it?
I was looking for you at the chapel as I passed,
and the Angelus bell after ringing.

30 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: Business I have here, ma'am.
I was in dread I might not be here before the train.

Mrs. Broderick: So you might not, indeed.
That nine o'clock train you can never trust it to
be late.

Hyacinth Halvey: To meet Father Gregan I
am come, and maybe to go on myself.

Mrs. Broderick: Sure, I knew well you would
be in haste to be before Father Gregan, and we
knowing what we know.

Hyacinth Halvey: I have no business only to
be showing respect to him.

Shawn Early: His good word he will give to
Mr. Halvey at the Board, where it is likely he
will be made Clerk of the Union next week.

Mrs. Broderick: His good word he will give to
another thing besides that, I am thinking.

Hyacinth Halvey: I don't know what you are
talking about.

Mrs. Broderick: Did n't you hear the news,
Peter Tannian, that Mr. Halvey is apt to be
linked and joined in marriage with Miss Joyce,
the priest's housekeeper?

Peter Tannian: I to believe all the lies I 'd
hear, I 'd be a racked man by this.

Mrs. Broderick: What I say now is as true as
if you were on the other side of me. I suppose now
the priest is come home there '11 be no delay
getting the license.

The Full Moon 31

Hyacinth Halvey: It is not so settled as that.

Mrs. Broderick: Why wouldn't it be settled
and it being told at Mrs. Delane's and through
the whole world?

Peter Tannian: She should be a steady wife
for him — a fortied girl.

Shawn Early: A very good fortune in the bank
they are saying she has, and she having crossed
the ocean twice to America.

Bartley Fallon: It 's as good for him to have a
woman will keep the door open before him and
his victuals ready and a quiet tongue in her head.
Not like that little Tartar of my own.

Mrs! Broderick. And an educated woman along
with that. A man of his sort, going to be Clerk
of the Union and to be taken up with books and
papers, it 's likely he 'd die in a week, he to marry
a dunce.

Bartley Fallon: So it 's likely he would.

Mrs. Broderick: A little shop they are saying
she will take, for to open a flour store, and you to
be keeping the accounts, the way you would not
spend any waste time.

Hyacinth Halvey: I have no mind to be settling
myself down yet a while. I might maybe take
a ramble here or there. There 's many of my
comrades in the States.

Mrs. Broderick: To go away from Cloon, is it?
And why would you think to do that, and the

32 The Full Moon

whole town the same as a father and mother to
you? Sure, the sergeant would live and die with
you, and there are no two from this to Galway as
great as yourself and the priest. To see you
coming up the street, and your Dublin top-coat
around you, there are some would give you a
salute the same nearly as the Bishop.

Peter Tannian: They would n't do that maybe
and they hearing things as I heard them.

Hyacinth Halvey: What things?

Peter Tannian: There was a herd passing
through from Carrow. It is what I heard him
saying

Mrs. Broderick: You heard nothing of Mr.
Halvey, but what is worthy of him. But that 's
the way always. The most thing a man does, the
less he will get for it after.

Peter Tannian: A grand place in Carrow I
suppose you had?

Hyacinth Halvey: I had plenty of places. Giv-
ing out proclamations — attending waterworks

Mrs. Broderick: It is well fitted for any place
he is, and all that was written around him and he
coming into Cloon.

Peter Tannian: Writing is easy.

Mrs. Broderick: Look at him since he was here,
this twelvemonth back, that he never went into
a dance-house or stood at a cross-road, and never
lost a half-an-hour with drink. Made no blunder,

The Full Moon 33

made no rumours. Whatever could be said of
his worth, it could not be too well said.

Hyacinth Halvey: Do you think now, ma'am,
would it be any harm I to go spend a day or
maybe two days out of this — I to go on the
train

Miss Joyce: (At door, coming in backwards.)
Go back now, go back! Don't be following after
me in through the door! Is Mr. Halvey there?
Don't let her come following me, Mr. Halvey !

Hyacinth Halvey: Who is it is in it?

{Sound of discordant singing outside.)

Miss Joyce: Cracked Mary it is, that is after
coming back this day from the asylum.

Hyacinth Halvey: I never saw her, I think.

Shawn Early: The creature, she was light
this long while and not good in the head, and at
the last lunacy came on her and she was tied and
bound. Sometimes singing and dancing she does
be, and sometimes troublesome.

Miss Joyce: They had a right to keep her
spancelled in the asylum. She would begrudge
any respectable person to be walking the street.
She 'd hoot you, she 'd shout you, she 'd clap her
hands at you. She is a bJight in the town.

Hyacinth Halvey: There is a lad along with
her.

Shawn Early: It is Davideen, her brother,
that is innocent. He was left rambling from
3

34 The Full Moon

place to place the time she was put within walls.
{Cracked Mary and Davideen come in.
Miss Joyce clings to Hyacinth's arm.)

Cracked Mary: Give me a charity now, the
way 1 11 be keeping a little rag on me and a little
shoe to my foot. Give me the price of tobacco
and the price of a grain of tea; for tobacco is
blessed and tea is good for the head.

Shawn Early: Give out now, Davideen, a
verse of " The Heather Broom.'* That 's a
splendid tune.

Davideen: (Sings.)

Oh, don't you remember,
As it 's often I told you,
As you passed through our kitchen,
That a new broom sweeps clean?
Come out now and buy one,
Come out now and try one —
(His voice cracks, and he breaks off, laughing
foolishly.)

Mrs. Broderick: He has a sweet note in his
voice, but to know or to understand what he is
doing, he could n't do it.

Cracked Mary: Leave him a while. His song
that does be clogged through the daytime, the
same as the sight is clogged with myself. It
is n't but in the night time I can see anything
worth while. Davy is a proper boy, a proper boy ;

The Full Moon 35

let you leave Davy alone. It was himself came
before me ere yesterday in the morning, and I
walking out the madhouse door.

Shawn Early: It is often there will fiddlers be
waiting to play for them coming out, that are
maybe the finest dancers of the day.

Cracked Mary: Waiting before me he was, and
no one to give him knowledge unless it might be
the Big Man. I give you my word he near ate
the face off me. As glad to see me he was as if
I had dropped from heaven. Come hither to me,
Davy, and give no heed to them. It is as dull
and as lagging as themselves you would be maybe,
and the world to be different and the moon to
change its courses with the sun.

Bartley Fallon: I never would wish to be put
within a madhouse before I 'd die.

Cracked Mary: Sorry they were losing me.
There was not a better prisoner in it than my own
four bones.

Bartley Fallon: Squeals you would hear from
it, they were telling me, like you 'd hear at the
ringing of the pigs. Savages with whips beating
them the same as hounds. You would not stand
and listen to them for a hundred sovereigns. Of
all bad things that can come upon a man, it is
certain the madness is the last.

Miss Joyce: It is likely she was well content in
it, and the friends she had being of her own class.

36 The Full Moon

Cracked Mary: What way could you make
friends with people would be always talking?
Too much of talk and of noise there was in it,
cursing, and praying, and tormenting; some
dancing, some singing, and one writing a letter
to a she devil called Lucifer. I not to close my
ears, I would have lost the sound of Davideen's
song.

Miss Joyce: It was good shelter you got in it
through the bad weather, and not to be out
perishing under cold, the same as the starlings
in the snow.

Cracked Mary: I was my seven months in it,
my seven months and a day. My good clothes
that went astray on me and my boots. My fine
gaudy dress was all moth-eated, that was worked
with the wings of birds. To fall into dust and
ashes it did, and the wings rose up into the high
air.

Bartley Fallon. Take care would the madness
catch on to ourselves the same as the chin-cough
or the pock.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, that 's not the way it
goes travelling from one to another, but some
that are naturally cracked and inherit it.

Shawn Early: It is a family failing with her
tribe. The most of them get giddy in their latter
end.

Miss Joyce: It might be it was sent as a

The Full Moon 37

punishment before birth, for to show the power
of God.

Peter Tannian: It is tea-drinking does it,
and that is the reason it is on the wife it is apt to
fall for the most part.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, there *s some does be
thinking their wives is n't right, and there 's
others think they are too right. There to be any
fear of me going astray, I give you my word I 'd
lose my wits on the moment.

Hyacinth Halvey: There are some say it is the
moon.

Shawn Early: So it is too. The time the moon
is going back, the blood that is in a person does
be weakening, but when the moon is strong, the
blood that moves strong in the same way. And
it to be at the full, it drags the wits along with it,
the same as it drags the tide.

Mrs. Broderick: Those that are light show off
more and have the talk of twenty the time it is
at the full, that is sure enough. And to hold up
a silk handkerchief and to look through it, you
would see the four quarters of the moon; I was
often told that.

Miss Joyce: It is not you, Mr. Halvey, will
give in to an unruly thing like the moon, that is
under no authority, and cannot be put back, the
same as a fast day that would chance to fall
upon a feast.

38 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: It is likely it is put in the
sky the same as a clock for our use, the way you
would pick knowledge of the weather, the time
the stars would be wild about it.

Mrs. Broderick: That is very nice now. The
thing you 'd know, you 'd like to go on, and to
hear more or less about it.

Miss Joyce: (To H. H.) It is a lantern for
your own use it will be to-night, and his Reverence
coming home through the street, and yourself
coming along with him to the house.

Mrs. Broderick: That 's right, Miss Joyce.
Keep a good grip of him. What do you say to him
talking a while ago as if his mind was running on
some thought to leave Cloon?

Miss Joyce: What way could he leave it?

Hyacinth Halvey: No way at all, I *m thinking,
unless there would be a miracle worked by the
moon.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, miracles is gone out of
the world this long time, with education, unless
that they might happen in your own inside.

Miss Joyce: I '11 go set the table and kindle
the fire, and I '11 come back to meet the train
with you myself.

(She goes. A noise heard outside.)

Hyacinth Halvey: What is that now?

Shawn Early: (At door.) Some noise as of
running.

The Full Moon 39

Bartley Fallon: {Going to door.) It might chance
to be some prisoner they would be bringing to the
train.

Peter Tannian: No, but some lads that are
running.

{They go out. H. H. is going too, but Mrs.
Broderick goes before him and turns him
round in doorway.)

Mrs. Broderick: Don't be coming out now in
the dust that was formed by the heat is in the
breeze. It would be a pity to spoil your Dublin
coat, or your shirt that is that white you would
nearly take it to be blue.

{She goes out, pushing him in and shutting
door after her.)

Cracked Mary: Ha ! ha ! ha !

Hyacinth Halvey: What is it you are laughing
at?

Cracked Mary: Ha! ha! ha! It is a very
laughable thing now, the third most laughable
thing I ever met with in my lifetime.

Hyacinth Halvey: What is that?

Cracked Mary: A fine young man to be shut
up and bound in a narrow little shed, and the full
moon rising, and I knowing what I know!

Hyacinth Halvey: It 's little you are likely to
know about me.

Cracked Mary: Tambourines and fiddles and
pipes — melodeons and the whistling of drums.

40 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: I suppose it is the Carrow
fair you are talking about.

Cracked Mary: Sitting within walls, and a
top-coat wrapped around him, and mirth and
music and frolic being in the place we know, and
some dancing sets on the floor.

Hyacinth Halvey: I wish I was n't in this
place to-night. I would like well to be going on
the train, if it was n't for the talk the neighbours
would be making. I would like well to slip away.
It is a long time I am going without any sort of
funny comrades.

{Goes to door. The others enter quickly,
pushing him back.)

Bartley Fallon: Nothing at all to see. It would
be best for us to have stopped where we were.

Mrs. Broderick: Running like foals to see it,
and nothing to be in it worth while.

Hyacinth Halvey: What was it was in it?

Shawn Early: Nothing at all but some lads
that were running in pursuit of a dog.

Bartley Fallon: Near knocked us they did,
and they coming round the corner of the wall.

Hyacinth Halvey: Is it that it was a mad dog?

Peter Tannian: Ah, what mad? Mad dogs
are done away with now by the head Government
and muzzles and the police.

Bartley Fallon: They are more watchful over
them than they used. But all the same, you to

The Full Moon 41

see a strange dog afar off, you would be uneasy,
thinking it might be yourself he would be search-
ing out as his prey.

Mrs. Broderick: Sure, there did a dog go mad
through Galway, and the whole town rose against
him, and flocked him into a corner, and shot him
there. He did no harm after, he being made an
end of at the first.

Shawn Early: It might be that dog they were
pursuing after was mad, on the head of being
under the full moon.

Cracked Mary: {Jumping up excitedly.) That
mad dog, he is a Dublin dog; he is betune you
and Belfast — he is running ahead — you could n't
keep up with him.

Hyacinth Halvey: There is one, so, mad upon
the road.

Cracked Mary: There is police after him, but
they cannot come up with him; he destroyed a
splendid sow ; nine bonavs they buried or less.

Shawn Early: What place is he gone now?

Cracked Mary: He made off towards Craugh-
well, and he bit a fine young man.

Bartley Fallon: So he would too. Sure, when
a mad dog would be going about, on horseback
or wherever you are, you 're ruined.

Cracked Mary: That dog is going on all the
time ; he would n't stop, but go ahead and bring
that mouthful with him. He is still on the road;

42 The Full Moon

he is keeping the middle of the road; they say he
is as big as a calf.

Hyacinth Halvey: It is the police I have a
right to forewarn to go after him.

Cracked Mary: The motor cars is going to get
out to track him, for fear he would destroy the
world !

Mrs. Broderick: That is a very nice thought
now, to be sending the motor cars after him to
overturn and to crush him the same as an ass-car
in their path.

Cracked Mary: You can't save yourself from
a dog; he is after his own equals, dogs. He is
doing every harm. They are out night and day.

Shawn Early: Sure, a mad dog would go from
this Ato Kinvara in a half a minute, like the train.

Cracked Mary: He won't stay in this country
down — he goes the straight road — he takes by
the wind. He is as big as a yearling calf.

Mrs. Broderick: I would n't ever forgive myself
I to see him.

Cracked Mary: He is not very heavy yet.
There is only the relics in him.

Hyacinth Halvey: They have a right to bring
their rifles in their hand.

Cracked Mary: The police is afraid of their
life. They wrote for motor cars to follow him.
Sure, he 'd destroy the beasts of the field. A milch
cow, he to grab at her, she 's settled. Terrible

The Full Moon 43

wicked he is; he 's as big as five dogs, and he does
be very strong. I hope in the Lord he '11 be
caught. It will be a blessing from the Almighty
God to kill that dog.

Hyacinth Halvey: He is surely the one is
raging through the street.

Peter Tannian: Why wouldn't he be him?
Is it likely there would be two of them in it at the
one time?

Shawn Early: A queer cut of a dog he was;
a lurcher, a bastard hound.

Peter Tannian: I would say him to be about
the size of the foal of a horse.

Mrs. Broderick: Didn't he behave well not
to do ourselves an injury?

Bartley Fallon: It is likely he will do great
destruction. I would n't say but I felt the weight
of him and his two paws around my neck.

Hyacinth Halvey: I will go out following
him.

Shawn Early: {Holding him.) Oh, let you
not endanger yourself! It is the peelers should
go follow him, that are armed with their batons
and their guns.

Hyacinth Halvey: I '11 go. He might do some
injury going through the town.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah now, it is not yourself we
would let go into danger! It is Peter Tannian
should go, if any person should go.

44 The Full Moon

Peter Tannian: Is it Hyacinth Halvey you
are taking to be so far before myself?

Mrs. Broderick: Why would n't he be before
you?

Peter Tannian: Ask him what was he in
Carrow? Ask was he a sort of a corner-boy,
ringing the bell, pumping water, gathering a few
coppers in the daytime for to scatter on a game
of cards.

Hyacinth Halvey: Stop your lies and your chat !

Mrs. Broderick: {to Tannian) You are going
light in the head to talk that way.

Shawn Early: He is, and queer in the mind.
Take care did he get a bite from the dog, that
left some venom working in his blood.

Hyacinth Halvey: So he might, and he having
a sort of a little rent in his sleeve.

Peter Tannian: I to have got a bite from the
dog, is it? I did not come anear him at all.
You to strip me as bare as winter you will not
find the track of his teeth. It is Shawn Early
was nearer to him than what I was.

Shawn Early: I was not nearer, or as near as
what Mrs. Broderick was.

Mrs. Broderick: I made away when I saw him.
My chest is not the better of it yet. Since I
left off fretting I got gross. I am that nervous
I would run from a blessed sheep, let alone a dog.

Shawn Early: To see any of the signs of mad-

The Full Moon 45

ness upon him, it is Mr. Halvey the sergeant
would look to for to make his report.

Hyacinth Halvey: So I would make a report.

Peter Tannian: Is it that you lay down you
can see signs? Is that the learning they were
giving you in Carrow?

Mrs. Broderick: Don't be speaking with him
at all. It is easy know the signs. A person
to be laughing and mocking, and that would not
have the same habits with yourself, or to have
no fear of things you would be in dread of, or to
be using a different class of food.

Peter Tannian: I use no food but clean food.

Hyacinth Halvey: To be giddy in the head is
a sign, and to be talking of things that passed
years ago.

Peter Tannian: I am talking of nothing but
the thing I have a right to talk of.

Mrs. Broderick: To be nervous and thinking
and pausing, and playing with knicknacks.

Peter Tannian: It never was my habit to be
playing with knicknacks.

Bartley Fallon: When the master in the school
where I was went queer, he beat me with two
clean rods, and wrote my name with my own blood.

Mrs. Broderick: To take the shoe off their
foot, and to hit out right and left with it, bawling
their life out, tearing their clothes, scattering
and casting them in every part; or to run naked

46 The Full Moon

through the town, and all the people after them.

Shawn Early: To be jumping the height of
trees they do be, and all the people striving to
slacken them.

Hyacinth Halvey: To steal prayer-books and
rosaries, and to be saying prayers they never
could keep in mind before.

Mrs. Broderick: Very strong, that they could
leap a wall — jumping and pushing and kicking —
or to tie people to one another with a rope.

Shawn Early: Any fear of any person here
being violent, Mr. Halvey will get him put under
restraint.

Peter Tannian: Is it myself you are thinking
to put under restraint? Would a man would be
pushing and kicking and tearing his clothes, be
able to do arithmetic on a board? Look now at
that. {Chalks figures on door.) Three and three
makes six ! — and three

Mrs. Broderick: I 'm no hand at figuring, but
I can say out a blessed hymn, what any person
with the mind gone contrary in them could not do.
Hearken now till you '11 know is there confusion
in my mind. (Sings.)

Mary Broderick is my name;

Fiddane was my station;
Cloon is my dwelling-place;

And (I hope) heaven is my destination.

The Full Moon 47

Mary Broderick is my name,
Cloon was my

Cracked Mary: (With a cackle of delight.)
Give heed to them now, Davideen! That 's the
way the crazed people used to be going on in the
place where I was, every one thinking the other
to be cracked.

Hyacinth Halvey: (To Tannian.) Look now
at your great figuring! Argus with his hundred
eyes would n't know is that a nought or is it a
nine without a tail.

Peter Tannian: Leave that blame on a little
ridge that is in the nature of the chalk. Look
now at Mary Broderick, that it has failed to word
out her verse.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, what signifies? I 'd
never get light greatly. It would n't be worth
while I to go mad.

(Bartley Fallon gives a deep groan.)

Shawn Early: What is on you, Bartley?

Bartley Fallon: I 'm in dread it is I myself
has got the venom into my blood.

Hyacinth Halvey: What makes you think that?

Bartley Fallon: It 's a sort of a thing would
be apt to happen me, and any malice to fall within
the town at all.

Mrs. Broderick: Give heed to him, Hyacinth
Halvey; you are the most man we have to

48 The Full Moon

baffle any wrong thing coming in our midst!

Hyacinth Halvey: Is it that you are feeling
any pain as of a wound or a sore?

Bartley Fallon: Some sort of a little catch I 'm
thinking there is in under my knee. I would feel
no pain unless I would turn it contrary.

Hyacinth Halvey: What class of feeling would
you say you are feeling?

Bartley Fallon: I am feeling as if the five fingers
of my hand to be lessening from me, the same as
five farthing dips the heat of the sun would be
sweating the tallow from.

Hyacinth Halvey: That is a strange account.

Bartley Fallon: And a sort of a megrim in my
head, the same as a sheep would get a fit of
staggers in a field.

Hyacinth Halvey: That is what I would look
for. Is there some sort of a roaring in your ear?

Bartley Fallon: There is, there is, as if I would
hear voices would be talking.

Hyacinth Halvey: Would you feel any wish
to go tearing and destroying?

Bartley Fallon: I would indeed, and there to
be an enemy upon my path. Would you say
now, Widow Broderick, am I getting anyway
flushy in the face?

Mrs. Broderick: Don't leave your eye off him
for pity's sake. He is reddening as red as a rose.

Bartley Fallon: I could as if walk on the

The Full Moon 49

wind with lightness. Something that is rising
in my veins the same as froth would be rising on
a pint.

Hyacinth Halvey: It is the doctor I 'd best
call for — and maybe the sergeant and the priest.

Bartley Fallon: There are three thoughts going
through my mind — to hang myself or to drown
myself, or to cut my neck with a reaping-hook.

Mrs. Broderick: It is the doctor will serve him
best, where it is the mad blood that should be
bled away. To break up eggs, the white of them,
in a tin can, will put new blood in him, and whiskey,
and to taste no food through twenty-one days.

Bartley Fallon: I 'm thinking so long a fast
would n't serve me. I would n't wish the lads
will bear my body to the grave, to lay down there
was nothing within it but a grasshopper or a wisp
of dry grass.

Shawn Early: No, but to cut a piece out of
his leg the doctor will, the way the poison will
get no leave to work.

Peter Tannian: Or to burn it with red-hot
irons, the way it will not scatter itself and grow.
There does a doctor do that out in foreign.

Mrs. Broderick: It would be more natural to
cut the leg off him in some sort of a Christian way.

Shawn Early: If it was a pig was bit, or a sow
or a bonav, it to show the signs, it would be shot,
if it was a whole fleet of them was in it.

50 The Full Moon

Mrs. Broderick: I knew of a man that was
butler in a big house was bit, and they tied him
first and smothered him after, and his master
shot the dog. A splendid shot he was; the thing
he 'd not see he 'd hit it the same as the thing he 'd
see. I heard that from an outside neighbour of
my own, a woman that told no lies.

Shawn Early: Sure, they did the same thing to
a high-up lady over in England, and she after
being bit by her own little spaniel and it having
a ring around its neck.

Peter Tannian: That is the only best thing to
do. Whether the bite is from a dog, or a cat, or
whatever it may be, to put the quilt and the
blankets on the person and smother him in the
bed. To smother them out-and-out you should,
before the madness will work.

Hyacinth Halvey: I 'd be loth he to be shot
or smothered. I 'd sooner to give him a chance
in the asylum.

Mrs. Broderick: To keep him there and to try
him through three changes of the moon. It 's
well for you, Bartley, Mr. Halvey being in charge
of you, that is known to be a tender man.

Peter Tannian: He to have got a bite and to
go biting others, he would put in them the same
malice. It is the old people used to tell that
down, and they must have had some reason
doing that.

The Full Moon 51

Shawn Early: To get a bite of a dog you must
chance your life. There is no doubt at all about
that. It might work till the time of the new
moon or the full moon, and then they must be
shot or smothered.

Hyacinth Halvey: It is a pity there to be no
cure found for it in the world.

Shawn Early: There never came out from the
Almighty any cure for a mad dog.

{Bartley Fallon has been edging towards door.)

Shawn Early: Oh! stop him and keep a hold
of him, Mr. Halvey !

Hyacinth Halvey: Stop where you are.

Bartley Fallon: Is n't it enough to have mad-
ness before me, that you will not let me go fall in
my own choice place?

Hyacinth Halvey: The neighbours would think
it bad of me to let a raving man out into their
midst.

Bartley Fallon: Is it to shoot me you are going?

Hyacinth Halvey: I will call to the doctor to
say is the padded room at the workhouse the most
place where you will be safe, till such time as it
will be known did the poison wear away.

Bartley Fallon: I will not go in it ! It is likely
I might be forgot in it, or the nurses to be in dread
to bring me nourishment, and they to hear me
barking within the door. I 'm thinking it was
allotted by nature I never would die an easy death.

52 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: I will keep a watch over you
myself.

Bartley Fallon: Where 's the use of that the
time the breath will be gone out of me, and you
maybe playing cards on my coffin, and I having
nothing around or about me but the shroud, and
the habit, and the little board?

Hyacinth Halvey: Sure, I cannot leave you
the way you are.

Bartley Fallon: It is what I ever and always
heard, a dog to bite you, all you have to do is to
take a pinch of its hair and to lay it into the wound.

Mrs. Broderick: So I heard that myself. A
dog to bite any person he is entitled to be plucked
of his hair.

Hyacinth Halvey: I '11 go out; I might chance
to see him.

Mrs. Broderick: You will not, without getting
advice from the priest that is coming in the train.
Let his Reverence come into this place, and say is
it Bartley or is it Peter Tannian was done de-
struction on by the dog.

Shawn Early: There is a surer way than that.

Mrs. Broderick: What way?

Shawn Early: It takes madness to find out
madness. Let you call to the cracked woman
that should know.

Hyacinth Halvey: Come hither, Mary, and tell
us is there any one of your own sort in this shed?

The Full Moon 53

Mrs. Broderick: That is a good thought. It
is only themselves that recognise one another.

Bartley Fallon: Do not ask her! I will not
leave it to her !

Mrs. Broderick: Sure, she cannot say more
than what yourself has said against yourself.

Bartley Fallon: I 'm in dread she might know
too much, and be telling out what is within in my
mind.

Hyacinth Halvey: That 's foolishness. These
are not the ancient times, when Ireland was full
of haunted people.

Bartley Fallon: Is a man having a wife and
three acres of land to be put under the judgment
of a witch?

Hyacinth Halvey: I would not give in to any
pagan thing, but to recognise one of her own sort,
that is a thing can be understood.

Mrs. Broderick: So it could be too, the same
as witnesses in a court.

Bartley Fallon: I will not give in to going to
demons or druids or freemasons! Wasn't there
enough of misfortune set before my path through
every day of my lifetime without it to be linked
with me after my death? Is it that you would
force me to lose the comforts of heaven and to
get the poverty of hell? I tell you I will have no
trade with witches! I would sooner go face the
featherbeds.

54 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: Say out, girl, do you see
any craziness here or anything of the sort?

Cracked Mary: Every day in the year there
comes some malice into the world, and where it
comes from is no good place.

Mrs. Broderick: That is it, a venomous dew,
as in the year of the famine. There is no as-
tronomer can say it is from the earth or the sky.

Hyacinth Halvey: It is what we are asking you,
did any of that malice get its scope in this place ?

Cracked Mary: That was settled in Mayo two
thousand years ago.

Mrs. Broderick: Ah, there 's no head or tail
to that one's story. You 'd be left at the latter
end the same as at the commencement.

Hyacinth Halvey: That dog you were talking
of, that is raging through the district and the
town — did it leave any madness after it?

Cracked Mary: It will go in the wind, there is
a certain time for that. It might go off in the
wind again. It might go shaping off and do no
harm.

Bartley Fallon: Where is that dog presently,
till some person might go pluck out a few ribs
of its hair?

Cracked Mary: Raging ever and always it is,
raging wild. Sure, that is a dog was in it before
the foundations of the world.

Peter Tannian: Who is it now that venom fell

The Full Moon 55

on, whatever beasts jaws may have scattered
it?

Cracked Mary: It is the full moon knows that.
The moon to slacken it is safe, there is no harm
in it. Almighty God will do that much. He '11
slacken it like you 'd slacken lime.

Shawn Early: There is reason in what she is
saying. Set open the door and let the full moon
call its own !

Bartley Fallon: Don't let in the rays of it
upon us or I'm a gone man. It to shine on them
that are going wrong in the head, it would raise
a great stir in the mind. Sure, it *s in the asylum
at that time they do have whips to chastise them.
{Goes to corner.)

Cracked Mary: That 's it. The moon is ter-
rible. The full moon cracks them out and out,
any one that would have any spleen or any relics
in them.

Mrs. Broderick: Do not let in the light of it.
I would scruple to look at it myself.

Cracked Mary: Let you throw open the door,
Davideen. It is not ourselves are in dread that
the white man in the sky will be calling names
after us and ridiculing us. Ha! ha! I might
be as foolish as yourselves and as fearful, but for
the Almighty that left a little cleft in my skull,
that would let in His candle through the nighU
time.

56 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: Hurry on now, tell us is
there any one in this place is wild and astray like
yourself.

(He opens the door. The light falls on him.)

Cracked Mary: (Putting her hand on him.)
There was great shouting in the big round house,
and you coming into it last night.

Hyacinth Halvey: What are you saying? I
never went frolicking in the night time since the
day I came into Cloon.

Cracked Mary: We were talking of it a while
ago. I knew you by the smile and by the laugh
of you. A queen having a yellow dress, and the
hair on her smooth like marble. All the dead of
the village were in it, and of the living myself and
yourself.

Hyacinth Halvey: I thought it was of Carrow
she was talking; it is of the other world she is
raving, and of the shadow-shapes of the forth.

Cracked Mary: You have the door open —
the speckled horses are on the road ! — make a leap
on the horse as it goes by, the horse that is without
a rider. Can't you hear them puffing and roaring ?
Their breath is like a fog upon the air.

Hyacinth Halvey: What you hear is but the
train puffing afar off.

Cracked Mary: Make a snap at the bridle as it
passes by the bush in the western gap. Run out
now, run, where you have the bare ridge of the

The Full Moon 57

world before you, and no one to take orders from
but yourself, maybe, and God.

Hyacinth Halvey: Ah, what way can I run to
any place !

Cracked Mary: Stop where you are, so. In
my opinion it is little difference the moon can
see between the whole of ye. Come on, Davideen,
come out now, we have the wideness of the night
before us. O golden God ! All bad things quieten
in the night time, and the ugly thing itself will
put on some sort of a decent face! Come out
now to the night that will give you the song, and
will show myself out as beautiful as Helen of the
Greek gods, that hanged herself the day there
first came a wrinkle on her face !

Davideen: (Coming close, and taking her hand
as he sings.)

Oh! don't you remember
What our comrades called to us
And they footing steps
At the call of the moon?
Come out to the rushes,
Come out to the bushes,
Where the music is called
By the lads of Queen Anne !

(They look beautiful. They dance and sing
in perfect time as they go out.)
Peter Tannian: (Closing the door, and pointing

58 The Full Moon

at Hyacinth, who stands gazing after them, and when
the door is shut sits down thinking deeply.) It is
on him her judgment fell, and a clear judgment.

Shaidn Early: She gave out that award fair
enough.

Peter Tannian: Did you take notice, and he
coming into the shed, he had like some sort of a
little twist in his walk?

Mrs. Broderick: I would be loth to think there
would be any poison lurking in his veins. Where
now would it come from, and Cracked Mary's
dog being as good as no dog at all?

Peter Tannian: It might chance, and he a
child in the cradle, to get the bite of a dog. It
might be only now, its full time being come, its
power would begin to work.

Mrs. Broderick: So it would too, and he but
to see the shadow of the dog bit him in a body
glass, or in the waves, and he himself looking
over a boat, and as if called to throw himself in
the tide. But I would not have thought it of Mr.
Halvey. Well, it 's as hard to know what might
be spreading abroad in any person's mind, as to
put the body of a horse out through a cambric _
needle. (Hyacinth looks at them.)

Shawn Early: Be quiet now, he is going to say
some word.

Hyacinth Halvey: There is a thought in my
mind. I think it was coming this good while.

The Full Moon 59

Shawn Early: Whisht now and listen.

Hyacinth Halvey: I made a great mistake
coming into this place.

Peter Tannian: There was some mistake made
anyway.

Hyacinth: It is foolishness kept me in it ever
since. It is too big a name was put upon me.

Peter Tannian: It is the power of the moon is
forcing the truth out of him.

Hyacinth Halvey: Every person in the town
giving me out for more than I am. I got too
much of that in the heel.

Shawn Early: He is talking queer now anyway.

Hyacinth Halvey: Calling to me every little
minute — expecting me to do this thing and that
thing — watching me the same as a watchdog,
their eyes as if fixed upon my face.

Mrs. Broderick: To be giving out such strange
thoughts, he has n't much brains left around
him.

Hyacinth Halvey: I looking to be Clerk of the
Union, and the place I had giving me enough to
do, and too much to do. Tied on this side, tied
on that side. I to be bothered with business
through the holy livelong day!

Peter Tannian: It is good pay he got with it.
Eighty pounds a year does n't come on the wind.

Hyacinth Halvey: In danger to be linked and
wed — I never ambitioned it — with a woman

60 The Full Moon

would want me to be earning through every day
of the year.

Shawn Early: He is a gone man surely.

Hyacinth Halvey: The wide ridge of the world
before me, and to have no one to look to for
orders ; that would be better than roast and boiled
and all the comforts of the day. I declare to
goodness, and I 'd nearly take my oath, I 'd
sooner be among a fleet of tinkers, than attending
meetings of the Board !

Mrs. Broderick: If there are fairies in it, it
is in the fairies he is.

Peter Tannian: Give me a hold of that chain.

Mrs. Broderick: What is it you are about to do ?

Peter Tannian: To bind him to the chair I will

before he will burst out wild mad. Come over

here, Bartley Fallon, and lend a hand if you can.

{Bartley Fallon appears from corner with a

chicken crate over his head.)

Mrs. Broderick: O Bartley, that is the strangest
lightness ever I saw, to go bind a chicken crate
around your skull !

Bartley Fallon: "Will you tighten the knots I
have tied, Peter Tannian! I am in dread they
might slacken or fail.

Shawn Early: Was there ever seen before this
night such power to be in the moon !

Bartley Fallon: It would seem to be putting
very wild unruly thoughts a-through me, stirring

The Full JMoon 61

up whatever spleen or whatever relics was left
in me by the nature of the dog.

Peter Tannian: Is it that you think those rods,
spaced wide, as they are, will keep out the moon
from entering your brain?

Bartley Fallon: There does great strength
come at the time the wrts would be driven out of
a person. I never was handled by a policeman —
but once — and never hit a blow on any man. I
would not wish to destroy my neighbour or to
have his blood on my hands.

Shawn Early: It is best keep out of his reach.

Bartley Fallon: The way I have this fixed,
there is no person will be the worse for me. I to
rush down the street and to meet with my most
enemy in some lonesome craggy place, it would
fail me, and I thrusting for it to scatter any share
of poison in his body or to sink my teeth in his
skin. I would n't wonder I to have hung for
some of you, and that plan not to have come into
my head.

{Whistle of train heard.)

Hyacinth Halvey: (Getting up.) I have my mind
made up, I am going out of this on that train.

Peter Tannian: You are not going so easy as
what you think.

Hyacinth Halvey: Let you mind your own
business.

Peter Tannian: I am well able to mind it.

62 The Full Moon

Hyacinth Halvey: {Throwing off top -coat.) You
cannot keep me here.

Peter Tannian: Give me a hand with the chain.
(They throw it round Hyacinth and hold
him.)

Hyacinth Halvey: Is it out of your senses you
are gone?

Peter Tannian: Not at all, but yourself that
is gone raving mad from the fury and the strength
of some dog.

Miss Joyce: (At door.) Are you there, Hya-
cinth Halvey? The train is in. Come forward
now, and give a welcome to his Reverence.

Hyacinth Halvey: Let me go out of this !

Miss Joyce: You are near late as it is. The
train is about to start.

Hyacinth Halvey: Let me go, or I '11 tear the
heart out of ye !

Shawn Early: Oh, he is stark, staring mad !

Hyacinth Halvey: Mad, am I? Bit by a dog,
am I? You '11 see am I mad! I '11 show mad-
ness to you ! Let go your hold or I '11 skin you !
I '11 destroy you ! I '11 bite you ! I 'm a red
enemy to the whole of you ! Leave go your grip !
Yes, I 'm mad! Bow wow wow, wow wow!

(They let go and fall back in terror \ and he
rushes out of the door.)

Miss Joyce: What at all has happened?
Where is he gone?

The Full Moon 63

Shawn Early: To the train he is gone, and away
in it he is gone.

Miss Joyce: He gave some sort of a bark or a
howl.

Shawn Early: He is gone clean mad. Great
arguing he had, and leaping and roaring.

Bartley Fallon: {Taking off crate.) He went
very near to tear us all asunder. I declare I
am n't worth a match.

Mrs. Broderick: He made a reel in my head,
till I don't know am I right myself.

Shawn Early: Bawling his life out, tearing
his clothes, tearing and eating them. Look at
his top-coat he left after him.

Bartley Fallon: He poured all over with pure
white foam.

Peter Tannian: There now is an end of your
elegant man.

Shawn Early: Bit he was with the mad dog
that went tearing, and lads chasing him a while
ago.

Miss Joyce: Sure that was Tannian's own dog,
that had a bit of meat snapped from Quirke's
ass-car. He is without this door now. (All
look out.) He has the appearance of having a
full meal taken.

Bartley Fallon: And they to be saying I went
mad. That is the way always, and a thing to
be tasked to me that was not in it at all.

64 The Full Moon

Mrs. Broderick: {Laying her hand on Miss
Joyce's shoulder.) Take comfort now; and if it
was the moon done all, and has your bachelor
swept, let you not begrudge it its full share of
praise for the hand it had in banishing a strange
bird, might have gone wild and bawling like eleven,
and you after being wed with him, and would
maybe have put a match to the roof. And
had n't you the luck of the world now, that you
did not give notice to the priest !

Curtain

COATS

65

Hazel . . . EDITOR OF " CHAMPION "

Mineog . . . editor of "tribune* '

John A WAITER

66

COATS
Scene: Dining room of Royal Hotel Cloonmore.

Hazel: {Coming in.) Did Mr. Mineog come
yet, John?

John: He did not, Mr. Hazel. Ah, he won't
be long coming. It 's seldom he does be late.

Hazel: Is the dinner ready?

John: It is, sir. Boiled beef and parsnips,
the same as every Monday for all comers, and an
apple pie for yourself and Mr. Mineog.

Mineog: {Coming in.) Mr. Hazel is the first
to-night. I 'm glad to see you looking so good.

{They take off coats and give to waiter.)

Mineog: Put that on its own peg.

Hazel: And mine on its own peg to the rear.

John: I will, sir. {He drops coats in putting
them up. Then notices broken pane in window and
picks up the coats hurriedly, putting them on wrong
pegs. Hazel and Mineog have sat down.)

Hazel: Have you any strange news?

Mineog: I have but the same news I always
have, that it is quick Monday comes around, and
that it is hard make provision for to fill up the
four sheets of the Tribune, and nothing happen-

67

68 Coats

ing in these parts worth while. There would seem
to be no news on this day beyond all days of the
year.

Hazel: Sure there is the same care and the
same burden on myself. I wish I did n't put a
supplement to the Champion. The deer knows
what way will I fill it between this and Thursday,
or in what place I can go questing after news !

Mineog: Last week passed without anything
doing. It is a very backward place to give
information for two papers. If it was not for
the league is between us, and for us meeting here
on every Monday to make sure we are taking
different sides on every question may turn up,
and giving every abuse to one another in print,
there is no person would pay his penny for the
two of them, or it may be for the one of them.

Hazel: That is so. And the worst is, there
is no question ever rises that we do not agree on,
or that would have power to make us fall out in
earnest. It was different in my early time. The
questions used to rise up then were worth fighting
for.

Mineog: There are some people so cantanker-
ous they will heat themselves in argument as
to which side might be right or wrong in a war, or
if wars should be in it at all, or hangings.

Hazel: Ah, when they are as long on the road
as we are, they '11 take things easy.

Coats 69

Mineog: Now all the kingdoms of the earth
to go struggling on one wrong side or another, or
to bring themselves down to dust and ashes, it
would not break our friendship. In all the years
past there never did a cross word rise between us.

Hazel: There never will. What are the fights of
politics and parties beside living neighbourly with
one another, and to go peaceable to the grave, our
selves that are the oldest residents in the Square.

Mineog: It will be long indeed before you will
be followed to the grave. You didn't live no
length yet. You are too fresh to go out and to
forsake your wife and your family.

Hazel: Ah, when the age would be getting up
on you, you would n't be getting younger. But
it 's yourself that is as full of spirit as a four-year-
old. I wish I had a sovereign for every year you
will reign after me in the Square.

Mineog: {Sneezes.) There is a draught of
air coming in the window.

Hazel: {Rising.) Take care might it be open
— no, but a pane that is out. There is a very
chilly breeze sweeping in.

Mineog: {Rising.) I will put on my coat so.
There is no use giving provocation to a cold.

Hazel: I '11 do the same myself. It is hard
to banish a sore throat.

{They put on coats. John brings in dinner.
They sit down.)

70 Coats

Mineog: See can you baffle that draught of
air, John.

John: I '11 go in search of something to stop
it, sir. This bit of a board I brought is too
unshapely.

Mineog: Two columns of the Tribune as empty
yet as anything you could see. I had them kept
free for the Bishop's speech and he did n't come
after.

Hazel: That 's the same cause has left myself
with so wide a gap.

Mineog: In the years past there used always
to be something happening such as famines, or
the invention of printing. The whole world has
got very slack.

Hazel: You are a better hand than what I am
at filling odd spaces would be left bare. It is
often I think the news you put out comes partly
from your own brain, and the prophecies you lay
down about the weather and the crops.

Mineog: Ah, I might stick in a bit of invention
sometimes, when I 'm put to the pin of my collar.

Hazel: I might maybe make an attack on the
Tribune for that.

Mineog: Ah, what is it but a white sin. Sure
it tells every person the same thing. It does n't
tell many lies, it goes somewhere anear it.

Hazel: I spent a good while this evening
searching through the shelves of the press I have

Coats 71

in the office. I write an article an odd time, when
there is nothing doing, that might come handy in a
hurry.

Mineog: So have I a press of the sort, and
shelves in it. I am after going through them
to-day.

Hazel: But it 's hard find a thing would be
suitable, unless you might dress it up again
someway fresh.

Mineog: I made a thought and I searching a
while ago. I was thinking it would be a very
nice thing to show respect to yourself, and friend-
liness, putting down a short account of you and of
all you have done for your family and for the town.

Hazel: That is a strange thing now! I had
it in my mind to do the very same service to
yourself.

Mineog: Is that so?

Hazel: Your worth and your generosity and
the way you have worked the Tribune for your
own and for the public good.

Mineog: And another thing. I not only
thought to write it but I am after writing it.

Hazel: {Suspiciously.) You had not much
time for that.

Mineog: I never was one to spare myself in
anything that could benefit a friend.

Hazel: Neither would I spare myself. I have
my article wrote.

72 Coats

Mineog: I have a mind to read my own one to
you, the way you will know there is nothing in it
but what is friendly and is kind.

Hazel: I will do the same thing. There 's
nothing I have said in it but what you will like
to be hearing.

Mineog: {Who has rummaged pockets.) I

thought I put it in the inside pocket no

matter — here it is.

Hazel: {Rummaging.) Here is my one. I
was thinking I had it lost.

Mineog: {Reading, after he has turned over a
couple of sheets rapidly.) "Born and bred in
this Square, he took his chief pride in his native
town."

Hazel: {Turning over two sheets.) "It was in
this parish and district he spent the most part of

his promising youth Richly stored with

world-wide knowledge."

Mineog: "Well able to give out an opinion
on any matter at all."

Hazel: "To lay down his mind on paper it
would be hard to beat him."

Mineog: " With all that, humble that he would

halt and speak to you the same as a child "

I 'm maybe putting it down a bit too simple, but
the printer will give it a little shaping after.

Hazel: So will my own printer be lengthening
out the words for me according to the type and

Coats 73

the letters of the alphabet he will have plentiful
and to spare.

Mineog: "Well looking and well thought of.
A true Irishman in supporting all forms of sport.' '

Hazel: What 's that? I never was one for
betting on races or gaining prizes for riddles.

Mineog: It is strange now I have no recollec-
tion of putting that down. It is I myself in the
days gone by would put an odd shilling on a horse.

Hazel: These typewriters would bother the
world. Wait now — let me throw an eye on those
papers you have in your hand.

Mineog: Not at all. I would sooner be giving
it out to you myself.

Hazel: Of course it is very pleasing to be
listening to so nice an account — but lend it a
minute. {Puts out hand.)

Mineog: Bring me now a bottle of wine, John
— you know the sort — till I '11 drink to Mr.
Hazel's good health.

John: I will, sir.

Hazel: No, but bring it at my own expense
till I will drink to Mr. Mineog. Just give me a
hold of that paper for one minute only.

Mineog: Keep patience now. I will go through
it with no delay.

Hazel: {Making a snap.) Just for one minute.

Mineog: {Clapping his hand on it.) What a
hurry you are in! Stop now till I '11 find the

74 Coats

place. "Very rarely indeed has been met with so
fair and so neighbourly a man."

Hazel: Give me a look at it.

Mineog: What is it ails you? You are uneasy
about something. What is it you are hiding from
me?

Hazel: What would I have to hide but that
the papers got mixed in some way, and you have
in your hand what I wrote about yourself, and
not what you wrote about myself?

Mineog: What way did they get into the wrong
pocket now?

Hazel: {Putting MS. in his pocket.) Give me
back my own and I will give you back your own.

Mineog: I don't know. You are putting it
in my mind there might be something underhand.
I would like to make sure what did you say about
me in the heel. {Turns over.) "He was honest
and widely respected.* ' Was honest — are you
saying me to be a rogue at this time?

Hazel: That 's not fair dealing to be searching
through it against my will.

Mineog: "He was trusted through the whole
townland." Was trusted — is it that you are
making me out to be a thief?

Hazel: Well, follow your own road and take
your own way.

Mineog: " Mr. Mineog leaves no family

to lament his loss, but along with the Tribune,

Coats 75

which he fostered with the care of a father, we
offer up prayers for the repose of his soul."
{Stands up.) It is a notice of my death you are
after writing !

Hazel: You should understand that.

Mineog: An obituary notice! Of myself! Is
it that you expect me to quit the living world
between this and Thursday?

Hazel: I had no thought of the kind.

Mineog: I 'm not stretched yet! What call
have you to go offer prayers for me?

Hazel: I tell you I had it put by this long time
till I would have occasion to use it.

Mineog: Is it this long time, so, you have been
waiting for my death?

Hazel: Not at all.

Mineog: You to kill me to-day and to think
to bury me to-morrow !

Hazel: Can't you listen? I was wanting some-
thing to fill space.

Mineog: Would nothing serve you to fill space
but only my own corpse? To go set my coffin
making and to put nettles growing on my hearth !
Would n't it be enough to rob my house or to
make an attack upon my means? Would n't
that fill up the gap?

Hazel: Let you not twist it that way !

Mineog: The time I was in the face of my little
dinner to go startle me with a thing of the sort!

76 Coats

I 'm not worth the ground I stand on! For the
Champion of next Thursday! I to be dead ere
Thursday!

Hazel: I looked for no such thing.

Mineog: What is it makes you say me to be
done and dying? Am I reduced in the face?

Hazel: You are not.

Mineog: Am I yellow and pale and shrunken?

Hazel: Why would you be?

Mineog: Would you say me to be crampy in
the body? Am I staggery in the legs?

Hazel: I see no such signs.

Mineog: Is it in my hand you see them? Is
it lame or is it freezed-brittle like ice?

Hazel: It is as warm and as good as my own.

Mineog: Let me take a hold of you till you
will tell me has it the feel of a dead man's grip.

Hazel: I know that it has not.

Mineog: Is it shaking like a bunch of timber
shavings?

Hazel: Not at all, not at all.

Mineog: It should be my hearing that is
failing from me, or that I am crippled and have
lost my walk.

Hazel: You are roaring and bawling without
sense.

Mineog: Let the Champion go to flitters
before I will die to please it ! I will not give in to
it driving me out of the world before my hour is

Coats 77

spent ! It would hardly ask that of a man would
be of no use and no account, or even of a beast of
any consequence.

Hazel: Who is asking you to die?

Mineog: Giving no time hardly for the priest
to overtake me and to give me the rites of the
Church!

Hazel: I tell you there is no danger of you
giving up at all ! Every person knows there must
some sickness come before death. Some take
it from a neighbour and it is put on others by God.

Mineog: Even so, it 's hard say.

Hazel: You have not a ha'p'orth on you. No
complaint in the world wide.

Mineog: That 's nothing ! Sickness comes upon
some as sudden as to clap their hands.

Hazel: What are you talking about? You are
thinking us to be in the days of the cholera yet!

Mineog: There are yet other diseases besides
that.

Hazel: You put the measles over you and we
going the road to school.

Mineog: There is more than measles has power
bring a man down.

Hazel: You had the chin-cough passed and you
rising. We were cut at the one time for the pock.

Mineog: A disease to be allotted to you it
would find you out, and you maybe up twenty
mile in the air !

78 Coats

Hazel: Ah, what disease could have you swept
in the course of the next two days?

Mineog: That is what I'm after saying — un-
less you might have murder in your mind

Hazel: Ah, what murder!

Mineog: What way are you thinking to do
away with me? To shoot me with the trigger of
a gun and to give me shortening of life?

Hazel: The trigger of a gun! God bless it,
I never fingered such a thing in the length of my
life!

Mineog: To take aim at me and destroy me;
to shoot me in forty halves like a crow in the time
of the wheat !

Hazel: Oh, now, don't say a thing like that!

Mineog: Or to drown me maybe in the river,
enticing me across the rotten plank of the bridge.
{Seizing bottle.) Will you tell me on the virtue
of your oath, is death lurking in that sherry
wine?

Hazel: {Pulling out paper.) Ah, God bless
your jig! And how would I know is it a notice
of my own death has come into my hand in the
pocket of this coat I put on me through a mistake?

Mineog: Give it here. That 's my property !

Hazel: {Reading.) "We sympathise with Mrs.
Hazel and the family." There is proof now. Is
it that you would go grieving with my wife and
I to be living yet?

Coats 79

Mineog: I did n't follow you out beyond this
world with craving for the repose of your soul.
It is nothing at all beside what you wrote.

Hazel: Oh, I bear no grudge at all against you.
I am not huffy and crabbed like yourself to go
taking offence. Sure Kings and big people of
the sort are used to see their dead-notices made
ready from the hour of their birth out. And it
is not anything printed on papers or any flight of
words on the Tribune could give me any con-
cern at all. See now will I be put out. (Reads.)
What now is this? "Mr. Hazel was of good
race, having in him the old stock of the country,

the Mahons, the O'Hagans, the Casserlys ."

Where now did you get that? I never heard
before, a Casserly to be in my fathers.

Mineog: It might be on the side of the mother.

Hazel: It was not. My mother was a girl of
the Hessians that was born in the year of the
French. My grandmother was Winefred Kane.

Mineog: What is being out in one name towards
drawing down the forecast of all classes of deaths
upon myself?

Hazel: There are twenty thousand things you
might lay down and I would give them no leave
to annoy me. But I have no mind any strange
family to be mixed through me, but to go my own
road and to carry my own character.

Mineog: I would say you to be very crabbed

80 Coats

to be making much of a small little mistake of the
sort.

Hazel: I will not have blood put in my veins
that never rose up in them by birth. You to
have put a slur maybe on the whole of my pos-
terity for ever. That now is a thing out of
measure.

Mineog: It might be the Casserlys are as fair
as the Hessians, and as well looking and as well
reared.

Hazel: There *s no one can know that. What
place owns them? My tribe did n't come inside
the province. Every generation was born and
bred in this or in some neighbouring townland.

Mineog: Sure you will be but yourself what-
ever family may be laying claim to you.

Hazel: Any person of the Casserlys to have
done a wrong deed at any time, the neighbours
would be watching and probing my own brood
till they would see might the track of it break out
in any way. It ran through our race to be hard
tempered, from the Kanes that are very hot.

Mineog: Why would the family of the Cas-
serlys go doing wrong deeds more than another?

Hazel: I would never forgive it, if it was the
highest man in Connacht said it.

Mineog: I tell you there to be any flaw in
them, it would have worked itself out in yourself
ere this.

Coats 8 1

Hazel: Putting on me the weight of a family
I never knew or never heard the name of at all.
It is that is killing me entirely.

Mineog: Neither did I ever hear their name or
if they ever lived in the world, or did any deed
good or bad in it at all.

Hazel: What made you drag them hither for
to write them in my genealogies so?

Mineog: I did not drag them hither

Give me that paper. {Takes MS. and looks at
it.) What would it be but a misprint? Hessian,
Casserly. There does be great resemblance in
the sound of a double S.

Hazel: Whether or no, you have a great wrong
done me ! The person I had most dependence on
to be the most person to annoy me! If it was a
man from the County Mayo I would n't see him
treated that way!

Mineog: Have sense now! What would sig-
nify anything might be wrote about you, and the
green scraws being over your head?

Hazel: That 's the worst! I give you my
oath I would not go miching from death or be in
terror of the sharpness of his bones, and he coming
as at the Flood to sweep the living world along
with me, and leave no man on earth having pen-
manship to handle my deeds, or to put his own
skin on my story !

Mineog: Ah it 's likely the both of us will

82 Coats

be forgotten and our names along with us, and we
out in the meadow of the dead.

Hazel: I will not be forgotten ! I have poster-
ity will put a good slab over me. Not like some
would be left without a monument, unless it might
be the rags of a cast waistcoat would be put on
sticks in a barley garden, to go flapping at the
thieves of the air.

Mineog: Let the birds or the neighbours go
screech after me and welcome, and I not in it to
hear or to be annoyed.

Hazel: Why would n't we hear? I 'm in dread
it *s too much 1 11 hear, and you yourself sending
such news to travel abroad, that there is blood
in me I concealed through my lifetime!

Mineog: What you are saying now has not
the sense of reason.

Hazel: Tom Mineog to say that of me, that
was my trusty comrade and my friend, what at
all will strangers be putting out about me?

Mineog: Ah, what call have you to go la-
menting as if you had lost all on this side of the
sea!

Hazel: You to have brought that annoyance
on me, what would enemies be saying of me?
That it was in my breed to be cracked or to have
a thorn in the tongue. There 's a generation of
families would be great with you, and behind you
they would be backbiting you.

Coats 83

Mineog: They will not. You are of a family
does n't know how to say a wrong word.

Hazel: A rabbit mushroom they might say
me to be, with no memory behind or around me !

Mineog: Not at all. The world knows you
to be civil and brought up to mannerly ways.

Hazel: They might say me to have been a
foreigner or a Jew man !

Mineog: I can bear witness you have no such
yellow look. And Hazel is a natural name.

Hazel: It 's likely they '11 say I was a sheep-
stealer or a tinker that went foraging around after
food!

Mineog: You that never put your hand on a
rabbit burrow or stood before a magistrate or a
judge!

Hazel: They '11 put me down as a grabber that
was ready to quench a widow's fire !

Mineog: Oh, where are you running to at all
my dear man !

Hazel: And I not to be able at that time to
rise up and to get satisfaction ! I to be wandering
as a shadow and to see some schemer spilling
out his lies! That would be the most grief in
death! I to hit him a blow of my fist and he
maybe not to feel it or to think it to be but a
breeze of wind !

Mineog: You are going too far entirely !

Hazel: I to give out a strong curse on him and

84 Coats

on his posterity and his land. It would kill my
heart if he would take it to be no human voice, but
some vanity like the hissing of geese !

Mineog: I myself would recognise your voice,
and you to be living or dead.

Hazel: You say that now. But my ghost to
come calling to you in the night time to rise up and
to clear my character, you would run shivering to
the priest as from some unnatural thing. You
would call to him to come banish me with a
Mass!

Mineog: The Lord be between us and harm i

Hazel: To have no power of revenge after
death! My strength to go nourish weeds and
grass ! A lie to be told and I living I could go lay
my case before the courts. So I will too ! I '11
silence you! I '11 learn you to have done with
misspellings and with death notices! I '11 hinder
you bringing in Casserlys ! I go take advice from
the lawyer! (Goes towards door.)

Mineog: I '11 go lay down my own case and the
way that you have my life threatened !

Hazel: I '11 get justice and a hearing. The
Judge will give in to my say !

Mineog: I that will put you under tail! I '11
bind you over to quit prophesying !

Hazel: I '11 break the bail of the sun and
moon before I '11 give you leave to go brand me
with strange names the same as you would tar-

Coats 85

brand a sheep! I '11 put yourself and your
Tribune under the law of libel !

Mineog: I '11 make a world's wonder of you!
I '11 give plenty and enough to the Champion to
fill out its windy pages that time !

Hazel: {At door.) I will lay my information
before you will overtake me !

Mineog: {Seizing him.) I will lay my infor-
mation against you for theft and you bringing
away my coat !

Hazel: I have no intention of bringing it away !

Mineog: Is it that you will deny it? Don't
I know that spot of grease on the sleeve?

Hazel: Did I never carve a goose? Why
would n't there be a spot of grease on my own
sleeve?

Mineog: Strip it off of you this minute!

Hazel: Give me back my own coat, so !

Mineog: What are you talking about ! That 's
a great wonder now. So it is not my own coat.

Hazel: Strip it off before you will quit the room !

Mineog: I '11 be well pleased casting it off!

Hazel: You will not cast it on the dust and the
dirt of the floor! {Helps him.) Go easy now.

That 's it {Takes it off gently and places

it on chair.)

Mineog: Give me now my own coat !

Hazel: {Struggling with it.) It fails me to
get it off.

86 Coats

Mineog: What way did you get it on?

Hazel: It is that it is made too narrow.

Mineog: No, but yourself that has too much
bulk.

Hazel: {Struggling.) There now is a tear!

Mineog: {Taking his arm.) Mind now, you '11
have it destroyed.

Hazel: Give me a hand, so.

Mineog: {Helping him gently.) Have a care —

it 's a bit tender in the seams give me here

your hand — it is caught in the rip of the lining.

John: {Coming in, puts pie on table.) Wait
now, sir, till I '11 aid you to handle Mr. Hazel's
coat. {Whips off coat, takes up other coat, hangs
both on pegs.) The apple pie, Sir.

{Hazel sits down, gasping and wiping his
face. Mineog turns his back.)

John: Is there anything after happening, Mr.
Hazel?

Hazel: There is not — unless some sort of a
battle.

John: Ah, what signifies? There to be more
of battles in the world there would be less of wars.
{He pushes Mineog 's chair to table.)

Hazel: {After a pause.) Apple pie?

Mineog: {Sitting down.) Indeed, I am not
any way inclined for eating.

{Takes plate. John stuffs a cushion into
window pane and picks up MSS.)

Coats 87

John: Are these belonging to you, Mr. Mineog ?

Mineog: Let you throw them on the coals of
the fire, where we have no use for them presently.

Hazel: {Stopping John and taking them.)
Thursday is very near at hand. Two empty
columns is a large space to go fill.

Mineog: Indeed I am feeling no way fit to go
writing columns.

Hazel: {Putting his MS. in his pocket.) There is
nothing ails them only to begin a good way after
the start, and to stop before the finish.

Mineog: {Putting his MS. in his pocket.) We '11
do that. We can put such part of them as we do
not need at this time back in the shelf of the press.

Hazel: {Filling glasses and lifting his.) That
it may be long before they will be needed !

Mineog: {Lifting glass.) That they may never
be needed!

Curtain

DAMER'S GOLD

A COMEDY IN TWO ACTS

89

Persons
Patrick Kirwan
Staff y Kirwan
Delia Hessian
Ralph Hessian
Simon Niland

CALLED DAMER

HIS BROTHER

HIS SISTER

HER HUSBAND

THEIR NEPHEW

90

DAMER'S GOLD

Act I

Scene: The kitchen in Darner's house. Outer
door at back. Door leading to an inner room
to right. A dresser ', a table, and a couple of
chairs. An old coat and hat hanging on the
wall. A knocking is heard at door at back.
It is unlatched from outside. Delia comes in.

Delia: {Looking round cautiously and going
back to door.) You may come in, Staff y and
Ralph. There would seem to be no person here.

Staffy: Take care would Darner ask us to
cross the threshold at all. I would not ask to
go pushing on him, but to wait till he would call
to us himself. He is not an easy led man.

Delia: {Crossing and knocking at inner door.)
He is not in it. He is likely slipped out unknownst.

Ralph: Herself that thought to find him at the
brink of death and nearing his last leap, after what
happened him with the jennet. We heard tell
of it as far as we were.

Delia: What ailed him to go own a jennet,
he that has means to stable a bay horse would

91

92 Darner's Gold

set the windows rattling on the public road, and
it sparkling over the flintstones after dark?

Staff y: Sure he owns* no fourfooted beast only
the dog abroad in its box. To make its way into
the haggard the jennet did, the time it staggered
him with a kick. To forage out some grazing it
thought to do, beyond dirt and scutchgrass among
the stones. Very cross jennets do be, as it is a
cross man it met with.

Delia: A queer sort of a brother he is. To go
searching Ireland you wouldn't find queerer.
But as soon as I got word what happened I bade
Ralph to put the tacklings on the ass. We must
have nature about us some way. There was
silence between us long enough.

Ralph: She was thinking it might be the cause
of him getting his death sooner than God has it
promised to him, and that it might turn his mind
more friendly like towards us, he knowing us to
be at hand for to settle out his burying.

Delia: Why would n't it, and we being all the
brothers and sisters ever he had, since Jane
Niland, God rest her soul, went out last Little
Christmas from the troubles and torments of the
world.

Staffy: There is nothing left of that marriage
now, only one young lad is said to be mostly a fool.

Delia: It is ourselves can bear witness to that,
where he came into the house ere yesterday, hav-

Darner's Gold 93

ing no way of living, since death and misfortune
scattered him, but as if he was left down out of
the skies.

Ralph: He has not, unless the pound piece
the mother put into his hand at the last. It is
much she had that itself. The time Tom Niland
died from her, he didn't leave her hardly the
cat.

Staff y: The lad to have any wit around him
he would have come travelling hither along with
yourselves, to see would he knock any kindness
out of Darner.

Ralph: It is what herself was saying, it would
be no advantage to him to be coming here at all,
he being as he is half light, where there is nothing
only will or wit could pick any profit out of Darner.
She did not let on to him what side were we facing,
and we travelling out from Loughtyshassy.

Staffy: It is likely he will get tidings as good
as yourself. It is said, and said largely, Darner
has a full gallon jar of gold.

Ralph: There is no one could lift it — God bless
it — they were telling me. Filled up it is and
brimmed to the very brink.

Staffy: His heart and his soul gone into it.
He is death on that gallon of gold.

Delia: He would give leave to the poorhouse
to bury him, if he could but put in his will they
should leave it down with his bones.

94 Darner's Gold

Staffy: A man could live an easy life surely
and that much being in the house.

Delia: There is no more grasping man within
the four walls of the world. A strange thing he
turning to be so ugly and prone to misery, where
he was reared along with myself. I have the
first covetous person yet to meet I would like!
I never would go thrusting after gold, I to get
all Lord Clanricarde's estate.

Ralph: She never would, only at a time she
might have her own means spent and consumed.

Staffy: The house is very racked beside what
it was. The hungriest cabin in the whole ring
of Connemara would not show out so empty and
so bare.

Delia: {Taking up a jug.) No sign in this
vessel of anything that would leave a sign. I '11
go bail he takes his tea in a black state, and the
milk to be rotting in the churn.

Ralph: {Handling a coat and hat hanging on a
nail.) That 's a queer cut of a hat. That now
should have been a good top-coat in its time.

Delia: For pity's sake! That is the top-coat
and the hat he used to be wearing and he riding
his long-tailed pony to every racecourse from
this to the Curragh of Kildare. A good class of
cloth it should be to last out through seventeen
years.

Staffy: The time he was young and fundless

Darner's Gold 95

he had not a bad reaching hand. He never was
thrifty but lavish till he came into the ownership
of the land. It is as if his luck left him, he growing
timid at the time he had means to lose.

Delia: Every horse he would back at that time
it would surely win all before it. I saw the people
thronging him one time, taking him in their arms
for joy, and the winnings coming into his hand.
It is likely they ran out through the fingers as
swift nearly as they flowed in.

Staffy: He grew to be very dark and crabbed
from the time of the father's death. His mind
was on his halfpenny ever since.

Delia: (Looking at dresser.) Spiders' webs
heaped in ridges the same as windrows in a bleach
of hay. What now is that there above on the
upper shelf?

Ralph: (Taking it from top shelf.) It is but
a pack of cards.

Staffy: They should maybe be the very same
that brought him profit in his wild days. He
always had a lucky hand.

Delia: (Dusting them.) You would give your
seven oaths the dust to have been gathering on
them since the time of the Hebrews' Flood. I '11
tell you now a thing to do. We being here before
him in the house, why would n't we ready it and
put some sort of face upon it, the way he would
be in humour with us coming in.

96 Darner's Gold

Ralph: And the way he might incline to put
into our hand some good promise or some gift.

Delia: (Dusting.) I would wish no gift from
any person at all, but that my mind is set at this
time on a fleet of white goats and a guinea-hen are
to be canted out from the Spanish woman at Lis-
atuwna cross by reason of the hanging gale.

Staffy: That was the way with you, Delia,
from the time you could look out from the half-
door, to be coveting pictures and fooleries, that
would shape themselves in your mind.

Delia: There is no sin coveting things are of
no great use or profit, but would show out good
and have some grandeur around them. Those
goats now! Browsing on the blossoms of the
bushes they would be, or the herbs that give out
a sweet smell. Stir yourself, Staffy, and throw
your eye on that turf beyond in the corner. It is
that wet you could wring from it splashes and
streams. Let you rise the ashes from the sods
are on the hearth and redden them with a goose-
wing, if there is a goosewing to be found. There is
no greater beauty to be met with than the leaping
of a little yellow flame.

Staffy: In my opinion there will no pay-day
come for this work, but only a thank-you job;
a County Clare payment, ' God spare you the
health !'

Delia: Let you do it, Ralph so. (Takes pota-

Darner's Gold 97

toes from a sieve.) A roasted potato would be a
nice thing to put before him, in the place of this
old crust of a loaf. Put them in now around the
sods, the way they will be crispy before him.

Ralph: (Taking them.) And the way he will
see you are a good housekeeper and will mind well
anything he might think fit to give.

Delia: (At clock.) I '11 set to the right time
of day the two hands of the clock are pointing a
full hour before the sun. Take, Staffy, that pair
of shoes and lessen from them the clay of the land.
That much of doing will not break your heart.
He will be as proud as the fallen angels seeing
the way we have all set out before him.

(A harsh laugh is heard at inner door. They
turn and see Darner watching them.)

Ralph: Glory be to God !

Delia: It is Darner was within all the time !

Staffy: What are you talking about, Delia?
It is Patrick you were meaning to say.

Darner: Let her go on prattling out Darner
to my face, as it is often she called it behind my
shoulders. Darner the chandler, the miser got the
spoil of the Danes, that was mocked at since
the time of the Danes. I know well herself and
the world have me christened with that nickname.

Ralph: Ah, it is not to dispraise you they put
it on you, but to show you out so wealthy and so
rich.

98 Darner's Gold

Darner: I am thinking it is not love of my four
bones brings you on this day under my thatch ?

Staffy: We heard tell you were after being
destroyed with a jennet.

Darner: Picking up newses and tidings of me
ye do be. It is short the delay was on you coming.

Delia: And I after travelling through the most
of the day on the head of you being wounded and
hurt, thinking you to be grieving to see one of
your own! And I in dread of my life stealing
past your wicked dog.

Darner: My joy he is, scaring you with his
bark ! If it was n't for him you would have me
clogged and tormented, coming in and bothering
me every whole minute.

Delia: There is no person in Ireland only
yourself but would have as much welcome for me
to-day as on the first day ever they saw me !

Darner: What 's that you are doing with my
broom?

Delia: To do away with the spider's webs I
did, where the shelves were looped with them and
smothered. Look at all that came off of that
pack of cards.

Darner: What call had you to do away with
them, and they belonging to myself? Is it to
bleed to death I should and I to get a tip of a
billhook or a slasher? You and your vagaries
to have left me bare, that I would be without

Darner's Gold 99

means to quench the blood, and it to rise up from
my veins and to scatter on every side !

Delia: Is it that you are without e'er a rag,
and that ancient coat to be hanging on the
wall?

Darner: The place swept to flitters! What is
that man of yours doing and he handling my turf?

Ralph: It was herself thought to be service-
able to you, setting out the fuel that was full of
dampness where it would get an air of the fire.

Darner: To dry it is it? (Seizes sods and takes
them from the hearth.) And what length would it
be without being burned and consumed and it
not to be wet putting it on? {Pours water over it.)
And I after stacking it purposely in the corner
where there does be a drip from the thatch.

Ralph: She but thought it would be more
answerable to you being dry.

Darner: What way could I bear the expense
of a fire on the hearth and it to leave smouldering
and to break out into a blaze? A month's cutting
maybe to go to ashes within three minutes, and
into wisps of smoke. And the price of turf in this
year gone wild out of measure, and it packed so
roguish you could read the printed speeches on
the paper through the sods you do be buying in
the creel.

Staff y: I was saying myself not to meddle with
it. It is hurry is a worse friend than delay.

ioo Darner's Gold

Darner: Where did you get those spuds are
roasting there upon the hearth ?

Ralph: Herself that brought them out from
the sieve, thinking to make ready your meal.

Darner: My seed potatoes! Samples I got
from the guardians and asked in the shops and in
stores till I 'd gather enough to set a few ridges
in the gardens would serve me through the length
of the year !

Delia: Let you be satisfied so with your mouldy
bit of loaf. {Breaks a bit from it and hands it to
him.)

Darner: Do not be breaking it so wasteful!
The mice to have news there was as much as that
of crumbs in the house, they would be running the
same as chickens around the floor !

Ralph: Thinking to be comfortable to you
she was, the way you would make us welcome
from this out.

Darner: Which of ye is after meddling with
my clock?

Delia: It was a full hour before its time.

Darner: It to be beyond its time, would n't
that save fire and candles sending me to my bed
early in the night? Leave down those boots!
{Takes them from Staff y.) Is it that you are
wearing out the uppers with scraping at them and
scratching ! Is it to rob me ye are come into this
place?

Darner's Gold 101

Delia: I tell you we only came in getting word
that you were done and dying.

Darner: Ha! Is it to think I was dying ye
did? Well, I am not. I am not so easy quenched.
Strength and courage I have, to keep a fast grip
of what I own.

Delia: Let you not be talking that way! We
are no grabbers and no thieves !

Darner: I have it in my mind that ye are.
Very ravenous to run through my money ye are.

Delia: The world knows I am not ravenous!
I never gave my heart to silver or to gold but only
to the thing it would bring in. But to hold from
me the thing my heart is craving after, you might
as well blacken the hearth.

Darner: Striving to scare me out of my courage
and my wits, the way I '11 give in to go making
my will.

Ralph: She would not be wishful you to do that
the time your mind would be vexed.

Darner: I '11 make it, sick or sound, if I have a
mind to make it.

Delia: Little thanks you '11 get from me if
you make it or do not make it. That is the naked
truth.

Darner: The whole of ye think yourselves to
be very managing and very wise !

Delia: Let you go will it so to an asylum for
fools.

102 Darner's Gold

Darner: Why wouldn't I? It is in the asylums
all the sense is these times. There is only the
fools left outside.

Delia: You to bestow it outside of your own
kindred for to benefit and comfort your soul, all
the world will say it is that you had it gathered
together by fraud.

Staffy: Do not be annoying him now.

Delia: I will not. But the time he will be
lying under the flagstone, it is holly rods and
brambles will spring up from out of his thorny
heart.

Darner: A hasty, cranky woman in the house
is worse than you to lay your hand upon red coals !
I know well your tongue that is as sharp as the
sickle of the moon !

Delia: The character you will leave after you
will be worse out and out than Herod's !

Darner: The devil upon the winds she is ! That
one was born into the world having the use of the
bow and arrows !

Delia: You not to give fair play to your own,
it is a pitiful ghost will appear in your image,
questing and craving our prayers !

Darner: I know well what is your aim and your
drift!

Delia: I say any man has a right to give thanks
to the heavens, and he having decent people to will
his means to, in place of people having no call to it.

Darner's Gold 103

Darner: Whoever I '11 will it to will have call
to it!

Delia: Or to part with it to low people and to
mean people, and you having it to give.

Darner: Having it to give is it? Do you see
that lock on the door?

Delia: I do see it and have eyes to see it.

Darner: Can you make any guess what is
inside of it?

Delia: It is likely it is what there is so much
talk about, your own full gallon of gold.

{Ralph takes off his hat.)

Darner: Lay now your eye to that lock hole.

Ralph: {Looking through keyhole.) It is all
dusky within. It fails me to see any shining
thing. {Staffy and Delia put their eyes to key-
hole but draw back disappointed.)

Darner: If you cannot see it, try can you get
the smell of it. Take a good draw of it now;
lay your head along the hinges of the door.
So now ye may quit and scamper out of this,
the whole throng of ye, robbers and hangmen
and bankbreakers, bargers and bad characters,
and you may believe me telling you that is the
nearest ye ever will come to my gold ! {He bangs
back into room locking door after him.)

Delia: He has no more nature than the brutes
of the field, hunting and howling after us.

Staffy: Yourself that rose him out of his wits

104 Darner's Gold

and his senses. We will sup sorrow for this day's
work where he will put curses after us. It is
best for us go back to my place. It may be to-
morrow that his anger will be cured up.

Ralph: I thought it was to lay him out with cand-
les we were brought here. I declare I came nearer
furnishing out a corpse myself with the start I got.
Delia: There is no dread on me. When he
gets in humour I will tackle up again to him.
It is too far I came to be facing back to Loughty-
shassy and I fasting from the price of my goats!
Little collars I was thinking to buckle around their
neck the same as a lady's lapdog, and maybe so
far as a small clear-sounding bell.

{They go out, Darner comes back. He puts
on clock, rakes out fire, picks up pota-
toes and puts them back in sieve, takes
bread into his room. There is a knock
at the door. Then it is cautiously opened
and Simon Niland comes in, and stands
near the hearth. Darner comes back
and sees him.)
Darner: What are you looking for?
Simon: For what I won't get seemingly, that
is a welcome.

Darner: Maybe it 's for fists you are looking?
Simon: It is not, before I will get my rest. I
could n't box to-night if I was the Queen of
England.

Darner's Gold 105

Darner: Have you any traffic with that con-
gregation is after going out?

Simon: I seen no person good or bad, but a
dog and it on the chain.

Darner: You to have in you any of the breed
of the Kirwans that is my own, I 'd rise the tongs
and pitch you out from the door !

Simon: I suppose you would not begrudge me
to rest myself for a while. {Sits down.)

Darner: I '11 give leave to no strolling vagabond
to sit in any place at all.

Simon: All right so. {Tosses a coin he takes
from his pocket, tied in a spotted handkerchief.)

Darner: What 's that you 're doing?

Simon: Pitching a coin I was to see would it
bid me go west or east.

Darner: Go toss outside so.

Simon: {Stooping and groping.) I will after
I will find it.

Darner: Hurry on now.

Simon: Wait till I '11 kindle a match. {Lights
one and picks up coin.)

Darner: What is that in your hand?

Simon: You should know.

Darner: Is it gold it is?

Simon: It is all I have of means in the world.
I never handled a coin before it, but my bite to be
given me and my bed.

Darner: You '11 mind it well if you have sense.

106 Darner's Gold

Simon: It is towards the east it bade me go.
I '11 travel as far as the races of Knockbarron
to-morrow.

Darner: You '11 be apt to lose it going to races.

Simon: I '11 go bet with it, and see what way
will it turn out.

Darner: You to set all you own upon a horse
that might fail at the leaps! It is a very foolish
thing doing that.

Simon: It might not. Some have luck and
are born lucky and more have run through their
luck. If I lose it, it is lost. It would not keep me
long anyway. I to win, I will have more and
plenty.

Darner: You will surely lose it.

Simon: If I do I have nothing to get or to fall
back on. It is some other one must take my
charges.

Darner: A great pity to go lose a gold sovereign
to some schemer you never saw before.

Simon: Sure you must take some risk. You
cannot put your hands around the world.

Darner: It to be swept by a trick of the loop
man!

Simon: It is not with that class I will make free.

Darner: To go lose the whole of it in one second
of time !

Simon: I will make four divides of it.

Darner: To go change it into silver and into

Darners Gold 107

copper! That would be the most pity in the
world.

Simon: I '11 chance it all upon the one jock

so.

Darner: Gold! Believe me it is a good thing
to hold and a very heartbreak the time it is lost.
{Takes it in his hand.) Pure gold! There is not
a thing to be got with it as worthy as what it is
itself! There is no comfort in any place and it
not in it. The Queers image on it and her crown.
Solid between the fingers; weighty in the palm of
the hand; as beautiful as ever I saw.

Simon: It is likely it is the same nearly as any
other one.

Darner: Gold! My darling it is! From the
hollows of the world to the heights of the world
there is no grander thing to be found. My bone
and my marrow! Let me have the full of my
arms of it and I '11 not ask the flowers of field or
fallow or the dancing of the Easter sun!

Simon: I am thinking you should be Darner.
I heard said Darner has a full crock of gold.

Darner: He has not ! He has not !

Simon: That is what the world says anyway.
I heard it as far as the seaside.

Darner: I wish to my God it was true !

Simon: Full and brimming to the brink. That
is the way it was told.

Darner: It is not full! It is not! Whisper

108 Darner's Gold

now. It is many a time I thought it to be full,
full at last, full at last !

Simon: And it was n't after?

Darner: To take it and to shake it I do. It is
often I gave myself a promise the time there will
be no sound from it, I will give in to nourish my-
self, I will rise out of misery. But every time I will
try it, I will hear a little clatter that tells me there
is some space left; some small little hole or gap.

Simon: What signifies that when you have so
much in it?

Darner: Weightier it gets and weightier, but
there will always be that little sound. I thought
to stop it one time, putting in a fistful of hayseed ;
but I felt in my heart that was not dealing fair
and honest with myself, and I rose up and shook
it out again, rising up from my bed in the night
time. I near got my death with the cold and the
draught fell on me doing that.

Simon: It is best for me be going on where I
might find my bed,

Darner: Hearken now. I am old and the long
road behind me. You are young and in your
strength. It is you is rich, it is I myself that is
poor. You know well, you to get the offer, you
would not change your lot with my own.

Simon: I suppose I might not. I'd as lief
keep my countenance and my run.

Darner: Is n't it a great pity there to be that

Darners Gold 109

hollow within in my gallon, and the little coin
that would likely just fill it up, to be going out
of the house?

Simon: Is it that you are asking it of me?

Darner: You might never find so good a way
to open Heaven to yourself with a charity. To be
bringing peace to an old man that has not long
to live in the world ! You would n't think now
how quiet I would sleep, and the good dreams
would be going through me, and that gallon jar
to be full and to make no sound the time I would
roll it on the floor. That would be a great deed
for one little pound piece to do !

Simon: 1 11 toss you for it.

Darner: I would not dare put anything at all
upon a chance.

Simon: Leave it alone so. {Turns away.)

Darner: {Seizing him.) It would make such
a good appearance in the little gap !

Simon: Head or harp?

Darner: No, I 'm in dread I might lose.

Simon: Take your chance or leave it.

Darner: I to lose, you may kill me on the
moment! My heart is driven down in the sole
of my shoe !

Simon: That is poor courage.

Darner: There is some shiver forewarning me
I will lose! I made a strong oath I never would
give in again to try any sort of chance.

no Darner's Gold

Simon: You did n't make it but with yourself.

Darner: It was through my luck leaving me I
swore against betting and gaming.

Simon: It might turn back fresh and hearty
where you gave it so long a rest.

Darner: Well — maybe

Simon: Here now.

Darner: I dare not.

Simon: {Going to door.) I '11 make my bet
so according to a dream I had. It is on a red
horse I will put it to-morrow.

Darner: No — stop — wait a minute.

Simon: I '11 win surely following my dream.

Darner: I might not lose.

Simon: I 'm in dread of that. All turns to
the man is rich.

Darner: 1 11 chance it !

Simon: You said no and I '11 take no.

Darner: You cannot go back of your word.

Simon: Let me go out from you tempting me.

Darner: {Seizing him.) Heads! I say heads!

Simon: Harps it is. I win.

Darner: My bitter grief ! Ochone!

Simon: I '11 toss you for another.

Darner: You will not. What 's tosses? Look
at here what is put in my way! {Holds up pack
of cards.)

Simon: Where 's the stakes?

Darner: Wait a second. {Goes into room.)

Darner's Gold in

Simon: Hurry on or I won't stop.

Darner: Let you not stir out of that! {Comes
back and throws money on table.)

Simon: Come on so. {Shuffles cards.)

Darner: Give me the pack. {Cuts.) I did n't
feel a card between my fingers this seven and a
half-score years !

Simon: Spades are trumps.

Darner: {Lighting candle.) I '11 win it back!
I won't begrudge spending a penny candle, no, or
two penny candles! I '11 play you to the brink
of day !

Curtain

Act II

The next morning. The same kitchen. Simon
Niland is lying asleep on the hearth. Ralph
and Staff y are looking at him.

Staff y: Who is it at all is in it?

Ralph: Who would it be but Simon Niland,
that is come following after us.

Staffy: Stretched and sleeping all the same as
if there was a pin of slumber in his hair, as in the
early times of the world. The day passing with-
out anything doing. That one will never win to a
fortune.

Ralph: It would be as well for ourselves maybe
he not to be too great with Darner.

Staffy: Will Delia make any headway I
wonder. She had good courage to go face him,
and he abroad on the land, sitting stooped on the
bent body of a bush.

Ralph: I wonder what way did that lad make
his way into this place. Wait now till I '11 waken
and question him. (Shakes Simon.)

Simon: (Drowsily.) Who is that stirring me?

Ralph: Rouse yourself up now.

112

Darner's Gold 113

Simon: Do not be rousing me, where I am
striving to catch a hold of the tail of my last dream.

Staff y: Is it seeking for a share of Darner's
wealth you are come?

Simon: I never asked and never looked for it.

Staffy: You are going the wrong road to reach
to it.

Simon: A bald cat there was in the dream, was
keeping watch over jewelleries in a cave.

Staffy: No person at all would stretch out his
hand to a lad would be rambling and walking the
world, and it in its darkness and sleep, and be
drowsing and miching from labour through the
hours the sun has command of.

Delia: {At the door.) Is it that ye are within,
Staffy and Ralph?

Ralph: We are, and another along with us.

Delia: Put him out the door!

Ralph: Ah, there 's no danger of him coming
around Darner. He is simple and has queer talk
too.

Delia: Put him out I say ! {Pushes Simon to
door.) Let him drowse out the day in the car shed !
I tell you Darner is at hand !

Ralph: Has he the frown on him yet?

Staffy: Did his anger anyway cool down?

Delia: He is coming I say. I am partly in
dread of him. I am afeard and affrighted!

Ralph: He should be in terrible rages so.

ii4 Darners Gold

There was no dread on you yesterday, and he
cursing and roaring the way he was.

Delia: He is mad this time out and out. Wait
now till you '11 see !

{She goes behind dresser. Darner comes to
the door. Staffy goes behind a chair.
Ralph seizes a broom.)

Darner: {A t door.) Are you acquainted with any
person, Ralph Hessian, is in need of a savage dog?

Staffy: Is it that you are about to part Jubair
your dog?

Darner: I have no use for him presently.

Staffy: Is it that you are without dread of
robbers coming for to knock in your skull with
a stone? Or maybe out in the night it is to burn
you out of the house they would.

Darner: What signifies, what signifies? All
must die, all must die. The longest person that
will live in the world, he is bound to go in the heel.
Life is a long road to travel and a hard rough track
under the feet.

Staffy: Mike Merrick the huckster has an
apple garden bought against the harvest. He
should likely be seeking for a dog. There do be
little lads passing to the school.

Darner: He might want him, he might want
him. {He leans upon half-door.)

Staffy: Is it that you are tired and wore out
carrying the load of your wealth?

Darner's Gold 115

Darner: It is a bad load surely. It was the
love of money destroyed Buonaparte where he
went robbing a church, without the men of learn-
ing are telling lies.

Staffy: I would never go so far as robbery, but
to bid it welcome I would, and it coming fair and
easy into my hand.

Darner: There was a king out in Foreign went
astray through the same sin. His people that
made a mockery of him after his death, rilling up
his jaws with rendered gold. Believe me, any
person goes coveting after riches puts himself under
a bad master.

Staffy: That is a master I 'd be willing to
engage with, he to give me my victuals and my
ease.

Darner: In my opinion it was to keep tempta-
tion from our path the gold of the world was
covered under rocks and in the depths of the
streams. Believe me it is best leave it where it
is, and not to meddle with the Almighty.

Staffy: You 'd be best without it. It is the
weight of it is bowing you to your grave. When
things are vexing your mind and you are trouble
minded they '11 be going through your head in the
night time. There is a big shift and a great change
in you since yesterday. There is not the half of
you in it. You have the cut of the misfortune.

Darner: I am under misfortune indeed.

n6 Darner's Gold

Staff y: Give over now your load to myself
before the coming of the dusk. The way you are
there '11 be nothing left of you within three days.
There is no way with you but death.

Delia: {To Ralph.) Let you raise your voice
now, and come around him on my own behalf.

Ralph: It is what herself is saying, you to be
quitting the world as it seems, it is as good for you
make over to her your crock of gold.

Darner: I would not wish, for all the glories of
Ireland, to leave temptation in the path of my
own sister or my kin, or to twist a gad for their
neck.

Delia: {To Ralph.) Tell him I '11 chance it.

Darner: At the time of the judgment of the
mountain, when the sun and moon will be all one
with two blackberries, it is not being pampered
with plenty will serve you, beside being great with
the angels!

Delia: {Shrinking back.) I would as soon
nearly not get it at all, where it might bring me to
the wretched state of Darner ! {Dog heard barking. )

Darner: I '11 go bring my poor Jubair out of
this. A great sin and a great pity to be losing
provision with a dog, and the image of the saints
maybe to be going hungry and bare. How do I
know what troop might be bearing witness against
me before the gate of heaven? To be cherishing
a ravenous beast might be setting his teeth in their

Darner's Gold 117

limbs! To give charity to the poor is the best
religion in Ireland. Didn't our Lord Himself
go beg through three and thirty years? (He goes.)

Delia: (Coming forward.) Will you believe
me now telling you he is gone unsteady in the
head?

Staffy: I see no other sign. He is a gone man
surely. His understanding warped and turned
backward. To see him blighted the way he is
would stir the heart of a stone.

Ralph: He surely got some vision or some
warning, or there lit on him a fit or a stroke.

Staffy: Twice a child and only once a man.
He is turned to be innocent with age.

Ralph: It would be a bad thing he to meet
with his death unknown to us.

Delia: It would be worse again he that is gone
out of his latitude to be brought away to the
asylum.

Ralph: I don't know.

Delia: But I know. He to die, and to make
no will, it is ourselves, by rule and by right, that
would lay claim to his wealth.

Staffy: So we could do that, and he to come
to his end in the bad place, God save the mark!

Delia: Would you say there would be no fear
the Government might stretch out and take
charge of it, saying him to be outside of his reason ?

Ralph: That would be the worst of all. We

n8 Darner's Gold

to be forced to hire an attorney against them, till
we would break one another at law.

Delia: He to be stopping here, and being light
in the brain, it is likely some thief travelling the
road might break his way in and sweep all.

Ralph: It would be right for us keep some sort
of a watch on it.

Staffy: What way would we be sitting here
watching it, the same as a hen on a pebble of flint,
through a quarter or it might be three quarters
of a year? He might drag for a good while yet,
and live and linger into old days.

Delia: To take some cross turn he might, and
to come at us violent and maybe tear the flesh
from our bones.

Staffy: It is best for us do nothing so, but to
leave it to the foreknowledge of God.

Delia: There is but the one thing to do. To
bring it away out of this and to lodge it within
in my own house. We can settle out a place under
the hearth.

Staffy: We can make a right division of it at
such time as the end will come.

Ralph: What way now will we bring away the
crock?

Delia: Let you go outside and be watching the
road while Staffy will be bringing out the gold.

Staffy: Ah, I 'm not so limber as what Ralph is.
There does be giddiness and delay in my feet. It

Darner's Gold 119

might fail me to heave it to a hiding place and to
bring it away unknownst.

Delia: Let you go out so and be keeping a
watch, and Ralph will put it on the ass-car under
sacks.

Ralph: Do it you. I am not of his own kindred
and his family. Any person to get a sketch of me
bringing it away they might nearly take myself
to be a thief.

Delia: We are doing but what is fair and is
right.

Ralph: Maybe so. But any neighbour to be
questioning me, it might be hard put a skin on
the story.

Delia: There is no person to do it but the one.
{Calls from the door.) Come in here from the shed,
Simon Niland, if the sluggishness is banished from
your eyesight and from your limbs.

Simon: {At door.) I was thinking to go travel
my road.

Delia: Have you any desire to reach out your
hand for to save a mortal life?

Simon: {Coming in.) Whose life is that ?

Staffy: The man of this house that is your
uncle and is owner of wealth closed up in a jar.
We now being wittier than himself, that has lost
his wits, have our mind made up to bring it away.

Simon: Outside of his knowledge is it?

Staffy: It will be safe and well minded and

120 Darner's Gold

lodged in loyal keeping, it being no profit to him
that is at this time shook and blighted, but only
a danger to his days.

Delia: The seven senses to be going astray on
him, what would ail any tramp or neuk would be
passing the road, not to rob him and to lay him
stone dead?

Staff y: Go in now and bring out from the room
and to such place as we will command, that gallon
jar of gold.

Ralph: It being certain it will be brought
away from him, it is best it to be kept in the family,
and not to go nourishing lawyers or thieves.

Simon: Is it to steal it I should?

Staffy: What way will it be stealing, and the
whole of us to be looking on at your deed?

Simon: Ah, what call have I to do that much
and maybe put myself in danger of the judge, for
the sake of a man is without sense.

Delia: Let you do it for my own sake so. You
heard me giving out news on yesterday of the
white goats are on the bounds of being sold.
The neighbours will give me no more credit, where
they loaned me the price of a crested side car was
auctioned out at a quality sale.

Ralph: Picking the eyes out of my own head
they are, to pay the little bills they have against
her.

Delia: I am no way greedy, I would ask neither

Darner's Gold 121

food or bite, I would not begrudge turning Sunday
into Friday if I could but get my heart's desire.
Such a thing now as a guinea-hen would be bring-
ing fashion to the door, throwing it a handful of
yellow meal, and it in its speckled plumage giving
out its foreign call !

Simon: I have no mind to be brought within
the power of the law.

Delia: You that are near in blood to refuse me
so small an asking, what chance would I have
sending requests to Heaven that is beyond the
height of the clouds ! {Weeps.)

Staffy: That 's the way with them that are
reared poor, they are the hardest after to humour,
striving to bring everything to their own way.
But there 's a class of people in the world would n't
do a hand's turn, no more than the bird upon the
tree.

Ralph: I wonder you not to give in to us,
when all the world knows God formed young
people for to be giving aid to elder people, and
beyond all to them that are near to them in blood.

Staffy: Look now, Simon, let you be said and
led by me. You having no great share of wisdom
we are wishful to make a snug man of you and to
put you on a right road. Go in now and you will
not be kept out of your own profit and your share,
and a harbour of plenty beyond all.

Simon: It might be guarded by a serpent in a

122 Darner's Gold

tree, or by unnatural things would be in the simil-
itude of cats.

Staffy: Ah, that class is done away with this
good while.

Ralph: There is no person having sense, but
would take means, by hook or by crook, to make
his pocket stiff and he to be given his fair chance*
It is to save you from starvation we are wishful
to do, as much as to bring profit to ourselves.

Staffy: You not to follow our say you will be
brought to burn green ferns to boil your victuals,
or to devour the berries of the bush.

Simon: I would not wish a head to follow me
and leap up on the table and wrestle me, or to
drink against me with its gory mouth.

Staffy: You that have not the substance of a
crane's marrow, to go shrink from so small a
bidding, let you go on the shaughraun or to the
workhouse, where you would not take our advice.

Simon: I '11 go do your bidding so. I will go
bring out the crock.

Staffy: There is my whiteheaded boy! I '11
keep a watch, the way Darner will not steal in on
us without warning.

Ralph: He should have the key in some secret
place. It is best for you give the lock a blow of
your foot.

Simon: I '11 do that. (He gives door a kick.
It opens easily.)

Darner's Gold 123

Delia: Was I right now saying Darner is
turned innocent? Sure the door was not locked
at all.

Simon: {Dragging out jar.) Here it is now.

Ralph: So it is and no mistake.

Staffy: There should be great weight in it.

Ralph: I am in dread it might work a hole down
through the timber of the car.

Delia: Why would n't we open it here? It
would be handier bringing it away in small
divides.

Ralph: The way we would make sure of getting
our own share at the last.

Delia: Let you draw out the cork from it.

Ralph: I don't know can I lift it. (Stoops
and lifts it easily.) The Lord protect and save
us ! There is no weight in it at all !

Staffy: (Seizing and shaking it.) Not a one
penny in it but clean empty. That beats all.

Delia: It is with banknotes it is stuffed that
are deaf and do be giving out no sound. (She
pokes in a knitting pin.) Nothing in it at all, but
as bare as the canopy of heaven !

Ralph: There being nothing within in it,
where now is the gold?

Staffy: Some person should have made away
with it.

Delia: Some robber or some great rogue. A
terrible thing such ruffians to be around in the

124 Darner's Gold

world! To turn and rob a poor man of all he
had spared and had earned.

Staffy: They have done him a great wrong
surely, taking from him all he had of comfort in
his life.

Ralph: My grief it is there being no more
hangings for thieves, that are worse again than
murderers that might do their deed out of heat.
It is thieving is the last crime.

Staffy: We to lay our hand on that vagabond
we 11 give him cruelty will force him to Christian
habits.

Ralph: Take care might he be nearer than
what you think ! (He points at Simon. All look
at him.)

Staffy: Sure enough it is with himself only we
found him on the hearth this morning.

Delia: He hasn't hardly the intellect to be
the thief.

Simon: I tell you I never since the day I was born
could be charged with the weight of a brass pin !

Staffy: It is to Darner, my fine boy, you will
have to make out your case.

Simon: So I will make it out. Where now is
Darner?

Staffy: He is gone down the road, where he
brought away Jubair the dog.

Simon: What are you saying? The dog gone
is it? (Goes to door.)

Darner's Gold 125

Ralph: {Taking hold of him.) What makes you
go out in such a hurry?

Simon: What is that to you?

Delia: What cause has he to be making a run?

Simon: Let me mind my own business.

Staffy: It is maybe our own business.

Simon: To make a search I must in that dog's
kennel of straw.

Delia: Go out, Ralph, till you will bring it in.

(Ralph goes out.)

Staffy: (Seizing him.) A man to go rush out
headlong and money after being stolen, I have no
mind to let him make his escape.

Delia: If you are honest let you stop within
and not to put a bad appearance upon yourself
making off.

Simon: Let me out ! I tell you I have a thing
concealed in the box.

Staffy: A strange place to go hiding things
and a queer story altogether.

Delia: Do not let go your hold. He to go out
into the street, he has the wide world before him.

Ralph: (Dragging kennel in.) Here now is
the box.

Simon: (Breaking away and searching it.)
Where at all is it vanished?

Staffy: It is lies he was telling. There is noth-
ing at all within in it only a wisp of barley straw.

Simon: Where at all is it?

126 Darner's Gold

Staff y: What is it is gone from you?

Simon: Not a one pound left !

Delia: Why would you look to find coins of
money down in Jubair's bed ?

Simon: It is there I hid it.

Staff y: What is it you hid?

Simon: All that was in the crock and that I
took from it. Where now is my bag of gold?

Staff y: Do you hear what he is after saying?

Ralph: A lad of that sort will not be safe but
in the gaol. Let us give him into the grip of the
law.

Delia: No, but let the man owned it do that.

Staffy: So he can task him with it, and he
drawing to the door.

Delia: {Going to it.) It is time for you, Patrick,
come in.

{Darner comes in dragging a sack.)

Ralph: You are after being robbed and left bare.

Delia: Not a one penny left of all you have
cast into its mouth.

Ralph: Herself made a prophecy you would be
robbed with the weakening of your wits, and sure
enough it has come about.

Delia: Not a tint of it left. What now do you
say, hearing that?

Darner: {Sitting down by the hearth and laying
down sack.) If it should go it must go. That was
allotted to me in the skies.

Darner's Gold 127

Delia: Is it that you had knowledge ere this
of it being swept and lost?

Darner: If I had not, why would I have been
setting my mind upon eternity and striving to
bring to mind a few prayers? And to have parted
with my wicked dog?

Delia: Let you turn around till you will see
before you the man that is the robber and the thief !

Simon: Thief yourself! You that had a plan
made up to bring it away.

Darner: Delia, Delia, what was I laying down
a while ago? It is the love of riches has twisted
your heart and your mind.

Delia: Is it that you are contented to be made
this one's prey?

Darner: It was foretold for me. I to go stint
the body till I near put myself to death without
the Lord calling on me, and to lose every whole
pound after in one night's card playing.

Delia: Is it at cards you lost it?

Darner: With that same pack of cards you
laid out under my hand, I lost all I had gathered
to that one.

Staff y: Well, there is nothing so certain in the
world as the running of a fool to a fool.

Delia: Is it taking that lad you are to be a
fool? I thinking him to be as simple as you *d see
in the world, and he putting bread upon his own
butter as we slept !

128 Darner's Gold

Ralph: We to have known all then we know
now, we need not have wasted on him our advice.

Darner: Give me, boy, one answer. What in
the world wide put venture into you that made you
go face the dog?

Simon: Ah, what venture? And he being as
he is without teeth?

Darner: You know that, what no one in the
parish or out of it ever found out till now! You
should have put your hand in his jaw to know that
much! A right lad you are and a lucky lad. I
would nearly wish you of my own blood and of
my race.

Delia: Of your own blood is it?

Darner: That is what I would wish.

Delia: Is it that you are taking Simon Niland
to be a stranger?

Darner: What Simon Niland?

Delia: Your own nephew and only son to your
sister Sarah.

Darner: Do you tell me so! What way did it
fail me to recognise that, and he having daring
and spirit the same as used to be rising up in
myself in my early time?

Delia: He was born the very year of you com-
ing into possession of this place.

Darner: The same year my luck turned against
me, and every horse I would back would get the
staggers on the course, or would fail to rise at the

Darner's Gold 129

leaps. All the strength of fortune went from me
at that time, it is into himself it flowed and ran.
The dead spit and image of myself he is. Stop
with me here through the winter season and through
the summer season ! You to be in the house it is
not an unlucky house will be in it. The Royalty of
England and of Spain cannot touch upon yourself.
I am prouder of you than if you wrote the wars of
Homer or put down Turgesius of the Danes ! You
are a lad that can't be beat. It is you are the
Lamb of Luck!

Staffy: What call has he or any of us to be
stopping under Darner's roof and he owning but
the four walls presently and a poor little valley
of land?

Ralph: There is nothing worth while in his
keeping, and all he had gathered after being robbed.

Darner: Is that what you are saying? Well, I
am not so easy robbed as you think! {Takes bag
from the sack and shakes it.) Is that what you call
being robbed ?

Simon: That is my treasure and my bag !

Staffy: I thought it was after being brought
away from the two of you.

Darner: You are out of it! It is Jubair did
that much for me. Jubair, my darling, it is to-
night I '11 bring him back to the house! It is not
in the box he will be any more but alongside the
warmth of the hearth. The time I went unloosing

130 Darner's Gold

his chain, did n't he scrape with his paw till he
showed me all I had lost hid in under the straw, and
it in a spotted bag ! {Opens and pours out money.)

Simon: It is as well for you have it back where
it stopped so short with myself.

Darner: Is it that I would keep it from you
where it was won fair? It is a rogue of a man
would do that. Where would be the use, and I
knowing you could win it back from me at your
will, and the five trumps coming into your hand?
It is to share it we will and share alike, so long as
it will not give out !

Delia: A little handsel to myself would do the
both of you no harm at all.

Darner: Delia, my darling, I '11 go as far as
that on this day of wonders. I '11 handsel you
and welcome. I '11 bestow on you the empty jar.
{Gives it to her.)

Delia: I '11 take it. I '11 let on it to be weighty
and I facing back into Loughtyshassy.

Ralph: The neighbours seeing it and taking
you to be his heir you might come to your goats yet.

Delia: Ah, what *s goats and what is guinea-
hens? Did ever you see yoked horses in a coach,
their skin shining out like shells, rising their steps
in tune the same as a patrol of police? There are
peacocks on the lawns of Lough Cutra they were
telling me, having each of them a hundred eyes.
{Goes to door.)

Darner's Gold 131

Simon: (Putting his hand on the jar.) I don't
know. (To Darner) It might be a nice thing for
the two of us to start gathering the full of it again.

Darner: Not a fear of me. Where heaping
and hoarding that much has my years withered
and blighted up to this, it is not to storing treasure
in any vessel at all I will give the latter end of my
days, or to working the skin off my bones. Give
me here that coat. (Puts it on.) If I was tossed
and racked a while ago I '11 show out good from
this out. Come on now, out of this, till we '11
face to the races of Loughrea and of Knock-
barron. I was miserable and starved long enough.
(Puts on hat.) I 'm thinking as long as I '11 be
living I '11 take my view of the world, for it 's long
I '11 be lying when my eyes are closed and seeing
nothing at all !

(He seizes a handful of gold and puts it in
Simon* s pocket and another in his own.
They turn towards the door.)

Curtain

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

133

Persons

McDonough, a piper.
First Hag.
Second Hag.

134

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

Scene: A very poor room in Galway with outer and
inner door. Noises of a fair outside. A Hag
sitting by the fire. Another standing by outer
door.

First Hag: Is there e'er a sign of McDonough
to be coming?

Second Hag: There is not. There were two
or three asking for him, wanting him to bring the
pipes to some spree-house at the time the fair
will be at an end.

First Hag: A great wonder he not to have
come, and this the fair day of Galway.

Second Hag: He not to come ere evening, the
woman that is dead must go to her burying
without one to follow her, or any friend at all to
flatten the green scraws above her head.

First Hag: Is there no neighbour at all will do
that much, and she being gone out of the world?

Second Hag: There is not. You said to ask
Pat Marlborough, and I asked him, and he said
there were plenty of decent women and of well-
reared women in Galway he would follow and wel-
come the day they would die, without paying that

135

136 McDonough's Wife

respect to one not belonging to the district, or
that the town got no good account of the time she
came.

First Hag: Did you do as I bade you, asking
Cross Ford to send in a couple of the boys she has?

Second Hag: What a fool I 'd be asking her!
I laid down to her the way it was. McDonough's
wife to be dead, and he far out in the country, and
no one belonging to her to so much as lift the coffin
over the threshold of the door.

First Hag: What did she say hearing that?

Second Hag: She put a big laugh out of her,
and it is what she said: "May the devil die with
her, and it is well pleased the street will be getting
quit of her, and it is hard say on what mountain
she might be grazing now."

First Hag: There will no help come burying
her so.

Second Hag: It is too lofty McDonough was,
and too high-minded, bringing in a woman was
maybe no lawful wife, or no honest child itself,
but it might be a bychild or a tinker's brat, and
he giving out no account of her generations or of
her name.

First Hag: Whether or no, she was a little
giddy. But that is the way with McDonough.
He is sometimes an unruly lad, but he would near
knock you with his pride.

Second Hag: Indeed he is no way humble, but

McDonough's Wife 137

looking for attendance on her, as if she was the
youngest and the greatest in the world.

First Hag: It is not to humour her the Union
men will, and they carrying her to where they will
sink her into the ground, unless it might be
McDonough would come back, and he having
money in his hand, to bring in some keeners and
some hired men.

Second Hag: He to come back at this time it is
certain he will bring a fist-full of money.

First Hag: What makes you say that to be
certain?

Second Hag: A troop of sheep-shearers that are
on the west side of the fair, looking for hire from
the grass farmers. I heard them laying down
they met with McDonough at the big shearing at
Cregroostha.

First Hag: What day was that?

Second Hag: This day week for the world.

First Hag: He has time and plenty to be back
in Gal way ere this.

Second Hag: Great dancing they had and a
great supper at the time the shearing was at an
end and the fleeces lodged in the big sacks. It is
McDonough played his music through the night-
time. It is what I heard them saying, "He
went out of that place weightier than he went

in."

First Hag: He is a great one to squeeze the

138 McDonough's Wife

pipes surely. There is no place ever he went into
but he brought the whip out of it.

Second Hag: His father was better again, they
do be saying. It was from the other side he got
the gift.

First Hag: He did, and from beyond the world,
where he befriended some in the forths of the
Danes. It was they taught him their trade. I
heard tell, he to throw the pipes up on top of the
rafters, they would go sounding out tunes of them-
selves.

Second Hag: He could do no more with them
than what McDonough himself can do — may ill
luck attend him! It is inhuman tunes he does
be making ; unnatural they are.

First Hag: He is a great musician surely.

Second Hag: There is no person can be safe
from him the time he will put his " come hither "
upon them. I give you my word he set myself
dancing reels one time in the street, and I making
an attack on him for keeping the little lads miching
from school. That was a great scandal to put
upon a decent woman.

First Hag: He to be in the fair to-day and to
take the fancy, you would hear the nailed boots
of the frieze-coated man footing steps on the
sidewalk.

Second Hag: You would, and it 's likely he 'd
play a notion into the skulls of the pampootied

McDonough's Wife 139

boys from Aran, they to be kings of France or of
Germany, till they 'd go lift their head to the clouds
and go knocking all before them. And the police
it is likely laughing with themselves, as if listening
to the talk of the blackbird would be perched upon
a blessed bush.

First Hag: I wonder he did not come. Could
it be he might be made away with for the riches
he brought from Cregroostha? It would be a
strange thing now, he to be lying and his head
broke, at the butt of a wall, and the woman he
thought tho whole world of to be getting her burial
from the workhouse.

{A sound of pipes.)

Second Hag: Whist, I tell you! It 's the sound
of the pipes. It is McDonough, it is no other one.

First Hag: {Getting up.) I 'm in dread of him
coming in the house. He is a hasty man and
wicked, and he vexed. What at all will he say
and she being dead before him? Whether or no,
it will be a sharp grief to him, she to scatter and
to go. He might give me a backstroke and drive
me out from the door.

Second Hag: Let you make an attack upon
himself before he will have time to make his own
attack.

McDonough: {Coming in.) Catherine ! Where
is she? Where is Catherine?

First Hag: Is it readying the dinner before you,

140 McDonough' s Wife

or wringing out a shirt for the Sunday like any-
good slave of a wife, you are used to find your
woman, McDonough?

McDonough: What call would she have stop-
ping in the house with the withered like of yourself ?
It is not to the crabbed talk of a peevish hag a
handsome young woman would wish to be listening
and sport and funning being in the fair outside.

First Hag: Go look for her in the fair so, if it
is gadding up and down is her habit, and you being
gone out from her sight.

McDonough: {Shaking her.) Tell me out,
where is she?

First Hag: Tell out what harbour were you
yourself in from the day you left Cregroostha?

McDonough: Is it that she got word? — or that
she was tired waiting for me?

First Hag: She is gone away from you, Mc-
Donough.

McDonough: That is a lie, a black lie.

First Hag: Throwing a lie in a decent woman's
face will not bring you to the truth.

McDonough: Is it what you are laying down
that she went away with some other man? Say
that out if you have courage, and I '11 wring your
yellow windpipe.

First Hag: Leave your hand off me and open
the room door, and you will see am I telling you
any lie.

McDonough's Wife 141

McDonough: {Goes to door, then stops.) She is
not in it. She would have come out before me,
and she hearing the sound of the pipes.

First Hag: It is not the sound of the pipes
will rouse her, or any sound made in this world at
all.

McDonough: {Trembling.) What is it?

First Hag: She is gone and she is not living.

McDonough: Is it to die she did? {Clutches her.)

First Hag: Yesterday, and the bells ringing,
she turned her face to the south and died away.
It was at the hour of noon I knew and was aware
she was gone. A great loss it to be at the time of
the fair, and all the lodgers that would have come
into the house.

McDonough: It is not truth. What would
ail her to die?

First Hag: The makings of a child that came
before its time, God save the mark ! She made a
bad battle at the last.

McDonough: What way did it fail you to send
me out messengers seeking me when you knew her
to be done and dying?

First Hag: I thought she would drag another
while. There was no time for the priest itself to
overtake her, or to put the little dress of the Virgin
in her hand at the last gasp of death.

{McDonough goes into the room. He comes
out as if affrighted, leans his head against

142 McDonough's Wife

the wall, and breaks into a prayer in
Irish: "An Athair tha in Naomh, dean
trocaire orainn! A Dia Righ an Dom-
hain, dean trocaire orainn! A Mhuire
M athair Dia, dean trocaire orainn! ")

Second Hag: {Venturing near.) Do not go
fret after her, McDonough. She could not go
through the world forever, and travelling the
world. It might be that trouble went with her.

McDonough: Get out of that, you hags, you
witches you ! You croaking birds of ill luck ! It is
much if I will leave you in the living world, and
you not to have held back death from her!

Second Hag: That you may never be cross till
you will meet with your own death! What way
could any person do that?

McDonough: Get out the door and it will be
best for you!

Second Hag: You are talking foors talk and
giving out words that are foolishness! There is
no one at all can put away from his road the bones
and the thinness of death.

McDonough: I to have been in it he would not
have come under the lintel! Ugly as he is and
strong, I would be able for him and would wrestle
with him and drag him asunder and put him down !
Before I would let him lay his sharp touch on her
I would break and would crush his naked ribs,
and would burn them to lime and scatter them !

McDonough's Wife 143

First Hag: Where is the use raving? It is
best for you to turn your hand to the thing has
to be done.

McDonough: You to have stood in his path he
might have brought you away in her place! That
much would be no great thing to ask, and your
life being dead and in ashes.

First Hag: Quieten yourself now where it was
the will of God. She herself made no outcry and
no ravings. I did my best for her, laying her out
and putting a middling white sheet around her.
I went so far as to smoothen her hair on the two
sides of her face.

McDonough: (Turning to inner door.) Is it
that you are gone from me, Catherine, you that
were the blossom of the branch !

(Old woman moans.)

It is a bad case you to have gone and to have
left me as lonesome after you as that no one ever
saw the like !

(The old woman moans after each sentence.)

I to bring you travelling you were the best
traveller, and the best stepper, and the best that
ever faced the western blast, and the waves of it
blowing from you the shawl ! I to be sore in the
heart with walking you would make a smile of a
laugh. I would not feel the road having your
company ; I would walk every whole step of Ireland.

I to bring you to the dance-house you would

144 McDonough's Wife

dance till you had them all tired, the same in the
late of the day as in the commencement! Your
steps following quick on one another the same as
hard rain on a flagstone! They could not find
your equal in all Ireland or in the whole ring of
Connemara !

What way did it fail me to see the withering of
the branches on every bush, as it is certain they
withered the time laughter died with your laugh?
The cold of winter has settled on the hearth. My
heart is closed up with trouble !

First Hag: It is best for us shut the door and to
keep out the noises of the fair.

McDonough: Ah, what sort at all are the people
of the fair, to be doing their bargaining and clutch-
ing after their luckpenny, and she being stark
and quiet !

First Hag: She has to be buried ere evening.
There was a messenger of a clerk came laying that
down.

McDonough: May ill luck attend him! Is it
that he thinks she that is gone has no person be-
longing to her to wake her through the night-
time?

First Hag: He sent his men to coffin her. She
will be brought away in the heel of the day.

McDonough: It is a great wake I will give her.
It would not be for honour she to go without that
much. Cakes and candles and drink and tobacco!

McDonough's Wife 145

The table of this house is too narrow. It is from
the neighbours we should borrow tables.

First Hag: That cannot be. It is what the
man said, " This is a common lodging-house. It
is right to banish the dead from the living." He
has the law with him, and custom. There is no
use you thinking to go outside of that.

McDonough: My lasting grief it will be I not
to get leave to show her that respect !

First Hag: " There will a car be sent," he said,
' ' and two boys from the Union for to bear her out
from the house."

McDonough: Men from the Union, are you
saying? I would not give leave to one of them to
put a hand anigh or anear her ! It is not their car
will bring her to the grave. That would be the
most pity in the world !

First Hag: You have no other way to bring
her on her road. It is best for you give in to their
say.

McDonough: Where are the friends and the
neighbours that they would not put a hand under
her?

First Hag: They are after making their refusal.
She was not well liked in Galway. There is no
one will come to her help.

McDonough: Is that truth, or is it lies you have
made up for my tormenting?

First Hag: It is no lie at all. It is as sure as

146 McDonough' s Wife

the winter's frost. You have no one to draw to
but yourself.

McDonough: It is mad jealous the women of
Galway were and wild with anger, and she coming
among them, that was seventeen times better than
their best! My bitter grief I ever to have come
next or near them, or to have made music for the
lugs or for the feet of wide crooked hags! That
they may dance to their death to the devil's pipes
and be the disgrace of the world! It is a great
slur on Ireland and a great scandal they to have
made that refusing! That the Corrib River may
leave its merings and rise up out of its banks till
the waves will rise like mountains over the town
and smother it, with all that is left of its tribes !

First Hag: Be whist now, or they will be angered
and they hearing you outside in the fair.

McDonough: Let their day not thrive with the
buyers and the sellers in the fair! The curse of
mildew on the tillage men, that every grain of
seed they have sowed may be rotten in the ridges,
and the grass corn blasted from the east before
the latter end of harvest ! The curse of the dead
on the herds driving cattle and following after
markets and fairs! My own curse on the big
farmers slapping and spitting in their deal ! That
a blood murrain may fall upon their bullocks!
That rot may fall upon their flocks and maggots
make them their pasture and their prey between

McDonough's Wife 147

this and the great feast of Christmas! It is my
grief every hand in the fair not to be set shaking
and be crookened, where they were not stretched
out in friendship to the fair-haired woman that is
left her lone within boards !

Second Hag: {At door.) Is it a niggard you
are grown to be, McDonough, and you with riches
in your hand? Is it against a new wedding you
are keeping your pocket stiff, or to buy a house
and an estate, that it fails you to call in hired
women to make a right keening, and a few decent
boys to lift her through the streets?

McDonough: I to have money or means in my
hand, I would ask no help or be beholden to any
one at all.

Second Hag: If you had means, is it? I heard
by true telling that you have money and means.
"At the sheep-shearers' dance a high lady held
the plate for the piper; a sovereign she put in it
out of her hand, and there was no one of the big
gentry but followed her. There never was seen
so much riches in any hall or home." Where
now is the fifty gold sovereigns you brought away
from Cregroostha?

McDonough: Where is it?

Second Hag: Is it that you would begrudge it
to the woman is inside?

McDonough: You know well I would not
begrudge it.

148 McDonough's Wife

First Hag: A queer thing you to speak so stiff
and to be running down all around you, and your
own pocket being bulky the while.

McDonough: (Turning out pocket.) It is as
slack and as empty as when I went out from this.

Second Hag: You could not have run through
that much.

McDonough: Not a red halfpenny left, or so
much as the image of a farthing.

First Hag: Is it robbed and plundered you
were, and you walking the road?

McDonough: (Sitting down and rocking him-
self.) I wish to my God it was some robber
stripped and left me bare ! Robbed and plundered !
I was that, and by the worst man and the unkindest
that ever was joined to a woman or lost a woman,
and that is myself.

First Hag: Is it to lose it unknownst you did?

McDonough: What way did I lose it, is it?
I lost it knowingly and of my own will. Thrown
on counters, thrown on the drink-house floor,
given for spirits, given for porter, thrown for
drink for friends and acquaintances, for strangers
and strollers and vagabonds. Scattered in the
parish of Ardrahan and at Labane cross. Tramps
and schemers lying drunk and dead drunk at the
butt of every wall. (Buries head in his hands.)

First Hag: That is what happened the gold
yourself and the pipes had won? You made no

McDonough's Wife 149

delay doing that much. You have a great wrong
done to the woman inside, where you left her
burying bare.

Second Hag: She to be without a farthing
dip for her corpse, and you after lavishing
gold.

First Hag: You have a right to bruise your
knees making repentance, you that lay on the one
pillow with her. You to be putting curses upon
others and making attacks on them! I would
make no complaint, you to be naked at your own
burying and at the very hour of death, and the
rain falling down on your head.

McDonough: Little I mind what happens me.
There is no word you can put out of your mouth
can do me any injury at all. Oh, Catherine, it is
best for me go hang myself out of a tree, and my
carcass to be torn by savage dogs that went fam-
ished through a great length of time, and my bones
left without a token or a flag or a headstone, and
my name that was up at one time to be forgotten
out of mind! (He bursts out sobbing.)

First Hag: The shadows should be lengthening
in the street. Look out would you see the car to
be coming.

Second Hag: It was a while ago at the far
corner of the fair. They were but waiting for the
throng to lessen.

First Hag: They are making too much delay.

150 McDonough's Wife

Second Hag: I see a hint of the livery of the
poorhouse coming through the crowd.

First Hag: The men of the Union are coming
to bring her away, McDonough. There is nothing
more to be done. She will get her burial from the
rates.

McDonough: Oh, Catherine, Catherine! Is it
I myself have brought you to that shame and that
disgrace !

Second Hag: You are making too much of it.
Little it will signify, and we to be making clay,
who was it dug a hole through the nettles or lifted
down the sods over our head.

First Hag: That is so. What signifies she to
be followed or to be going her lone, and her eyes
being shut to the world?

McDonough: Is that the thought ye have
within ye, ye Gal way hags? It is easy known it
is in a trader's town you were bred, and in a street
among dealers.

First Hag: I was but saying it does not
signify.

McDonough: But I say it does signify! I will
tell that out to you and the world! That might
be the thought of a townsman or a trader, or a
rich merchant itself that had his estate gained by
trafficking, for that is a sort does be thinking more
of what they can make out of the living than of
keeping a good memory of the dead !

McDonough's Wife 151

First Hag: There are worthier men than
yourself, maybe, in storehouses and in shops.

McDonough: But I am of the generations of
Orpheus, and have in me the breed of his master!
And of Raftery and Carolan and O'Daly and all
that made sounds of music from this back to the
foundations of the earth! And as to the rich of
the world, I would not humble my head to them.
Let them have their serving men and their labour-
ers and messengers will do their bidding. But the
servant I myself command is the pipes that draws
its breath from the four winds, and from a wind
is beyond them again, and at the back of the winds
of the air. She was a wedded woman and a woman
having my own gold ring on her hand, and my
own name put down with hers in the book. But
she tc have been a shameless woman as ye make
her out to be, and sold from tinker to tinker on the
road it is all one! I will show Gal way and the
world that it does signify; that it is not fitting
McDonough's wife to travel without company
and good hands under her and good following on
the road. Play now, pipes, if you never played
before! Call to the keeners to follow her with
screams and beating of the hands and calling out!
Set them crying now with your sound and with
your notes, as it is often you brought them to the
dance-house ! (Goes out and plays a lament outside.)
First Hag: (Looking out.) It is queer and

152 McDonough's Wife

wild he is, cutting his teeth and the hair standing
on him.

Second Hag: Some high notion he has, calling
them to show honour to her as if she was the
Queen of the Angels.

First Hag: To draw to silence the whole fair
did. Every person is moving towards this house.
{A murmur as of people. McDonough comes
in, stands at door, looking out.)

McDonough: I squeeze the pipes as a challenge
to the whole of the fair, gentle noble and simple,
the poor and the high up. Come hither and cry
Catherine McDonough, give a hand to carry her
to the grave ! Come to her aid, tribes of Gal way ,
Lynches and Blakes and Frenches ! McDonough's
pipes give you that command, that have learned
the lamentation of the Danes.

Come follow her on the road, trades of Galway,
the fishermen, and the carpenters, and the weavers !
It is by no short road we will carry her that never
will walk any road from this out! By Williams-
gate, beside Lynch's gallows, beside the gaol of
the hangings, the salmon will make their leap as
we pass !

Men at Door: We will. We will follow her,
McDonough.

Others: Give us the first place.

Others: We ourselves will carry her !

McDonough: Faith, Catherine, you have your

McDonough's Wife 153

share and your choice this day of fine men,
asking to carry you and to lend you their
strength.

I will give no leave to traffickers to put their
shoulder under you, or to any that made a refusal,
or any seaside man at all.

I will give leave to no one but the sheep-shearers
from Eserkelly, from Moneen and Cahirlinny and
the whole stretch of Cregroostha. It is they have
friendship for music, it is they have a wish for my
four bones.

{Sheep-shearers come in. They are dressed
in white flannel. Each has a pair of
shears at his side. The first carries a
crook.)

First Sheep-shearer: Is it within there she is,
McDonough?

First Hag: Go in through the door. The boards
are around her and a clean quilt over them. Have
a care not to leave down your hands on it, and
they maybe being soiled with the fair.

{They take off their hats and go in.)

McDonough: {Turning to her door.) If you
got no great honour from your birth up, and went
barefoot through the first of your youth, you will
get great respect now and will be remembered in
the times to come.

There is many a lady dragging silk skirts
through the lawns and the flower knots of Con-

154 McDonough's Wife

nacht, will get no such grand gathering of people
at the last as you are getting on this day.

It is the story of the burying of McDonough's
wife will be written in the book of the people !

{Sheep-shearers appear at inner door. Mc~
Donough goes out, squeezing the pipes.
Triumphant music is heard from out-
side.)

Curtain

NOTES

THE BOGIE MEN

A message sent to America from Dublin that our
Theatre had been "driven out with hisses " ; an answer-
ing message from New York that the Playboy, the
cause of battle, was now "as dead as a doornail," set
me musing with renewed delight on our incorrigible
genius for myth-making, the faculty that makes our
traditional history a perpetual joy, because it is, like
the Sidhe, an eternal Shape-changer.

At Philadelphia, the city of trees, where in spite of
a day in the police court and before a judge, and the
arrest of our players at the suit not of a Puritan but
a publican, and the throwing of currant cake with
intent to injure, I received very great personal kind-
ness, a story of his childhood told by my host gave me
a fable on which to hang my musings ; and the Dublin
enthusiast and the American enthusiast who inter-
changed so many compliments and made so brave a
show to one another, became Dermot and Timothy,
"two harmless drifty lads," the Bogie Men of my little
play. They were to have been vagrants, tatterde-
malions, but I needed some dress the change of which
would change their whole appearance in a moment,
and there came to mind the chimney sweepers of my
childhood.

i55

15^

Notes

They used to come trotting the five miles from
Loughrea, little fellows with blue eyes shining out
from soot-black faces, wearing little soot-coloured
smocks. Our old doctor told us he had gone to see
one of them who was sick, and had found him lying in
a box, with soot up to his chin as bedding and blanket.

Not many years ago a decent looking man came to
my door, with I forget what request. He told me he
had heard of ghosts and fairies, but had never met
with anything worse than himself, but that he had
had one great fright in his lifetime. Its cause had
been the squealing and outcry made by two rats
caught in one trap, that had come clattering down a
flight of steps one time when he was a little lad, and
had come sweeping chimneys to Roxborough.

AIR OF "ALL AROUND MY HAT I WILL WEAR A
GREEN RIBBON!"

THE FULL MOON

It had sometimes preyed on my mind that Hyacinth
Halvey had been left by me in Cloon for his lifetime,
bearing the weight of a character that had been put on
him by force. But it failed me to release him by
reason, that "binds men to the wheel"; it took the

Notes

157

call of some of those unruly ones who give in to no
limitations, and dance to the sound of music that is
outside this world, to bring him out from "roast and
boiled and all the comforts of the day." Where he
is now I do not know, but anyway he is free.

Tannian's dog has now become a protagonist; and
Bartley Fallon and Shawn Early strayed in from the
fair green of Spreading the News, and Mrs. Broderick
from the little shop where The Jackdaw hops on the
counter, as witnesses to the miracle that happened in
Hyacinth's own inside; and it is likely they may be
talking of it yet ; for the talks of Cloon are long talks,
and the histories told there do not lessen or fail.

As to Davideen's song, I give the air of it below.
The Queen Anne in it was no English queen, but, as
I think, that Aine of the old gods at whose hill mad
dogs were used to gather, and who turned to grey the
yellow hair of Finn of the Fianna of Ireland. It is
with some thought of her in their mind that the
history-tellers say "Anne was not fair like the Georges
but very bad and a tyrant. She tyrannised over the
Irish. She was very wicked ; oh ! very wicked indeed ! ' '

AIR OF " THE HEATHER BROOM!"

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158 Notes

COATS

I find some bald little notes I made before writing
Coats. "Hazel is astonished Mineog can take such
a thing to heart, but it is quite different when he
himself is offended." "The quarrel is so violent you
think it can never be healed, but the ordinary cir-
cumstances of life force reconciliation. They are
the most powerful force of all." And then a quota-
tion from Nietzsche, "A good war justifies every

cause."

DAMER'S GOLD

In a lecture I gave last year on playwriting I said
I had been forced to write comedy because it was
wanted for our theatre, to put on at the end of the
verse plays, but that I think tragedy is easier. For,
I said, tragedy shows humanity in the grip of cir-
cumstance, of fate, of what our people call "the thing
will happen," "the Woman in the Stars that does all."
There is a woman in the stars they say, who is always
hurting herself in one way or other, and according to
what she is doing at the hour of your birth, so will it
happen to you in your lifetime, whether she is hanging
herself or drowning herself or burning herself in the
fire. "And," said an old man who was telling me this,
" I am thinking she was doing a great deal of acting at
the time I myself made my start in the world." Well,
you put your actor in the grip of this woman, in the
claws of the cat. Once in that grip you know what the
end must be. You may let your hero kick or struggle,

Notes 159

but he is in the claws all the time, it is a mere question
as to how nearly you will let him escape, and when you
will allow the pounce. Fate itself is the protagonist,
your actor cannot carry much character, it is out of
place. You do not want to know the character of a
wrestler you see trying his strength at a show.

In writing a little tragedy, The Gaol Gate, I made
the scenario in three lines, "He is an informer; he is
dead; he is hanged." I wrote that play very quickly.
My two poor women were in the clutch of the Woman
in the Stars. ... I knew what I was going to do and
I was able to keep within those three lines. But in
comedy it is different. Character comes in, and why
it is so I cannot explain, but as soon as one creates a
character, he begins to put out little feet of his own
and take his own way.

I had been meditating for a long time past on the
mass of advice that is given one by friends and well-
wishers and relations, advice that would be excellent
if the giver were not ignorant so often of the one
essential in the case, the one thing that matters.
But there is usually something out of sight, of which
the adviser is unaware, it may be something half
mischievously hidden from him, it may be that "secret
of the heart with God" that is called religion. In
the whole course of our work at the theatre we have
been I may say drenched with advice by friendly
people who for years gave us the reasons why we did
not succeed. . . . All their advice, or at least some of
it, might have been good if we had wanted to make
money, to make a common place of amusement. Our

160 Notes

advisers did not see that what we wanted was to
create for Ireland a theatre with a base of realism,
with an apex of beauty. Well, last summer I made a
fable for this meditation, this emotion, at the back of
my mind to drive.

I pictured to myself, for I usually first see a play
as a picture, a young man, a mere lad, very sleepy in
the daytime. He was surrounded by people kind
and wise, who lamented over his rags and idleness
and assured him that if he did n't get up early and
do his work in the daytime he would never know the
feel of money in his hand. He listens to all their
advice, but he does not take it, because he knows what
they do not know, that it is in the night time precisely
he is filling his pocket, in the night when, as I think, we
receive gifts from the unseen. I placed him in the
house of a miser, an old man who had saved a store
of gold. I called the old man Darner, from a folk-
story of a chandler who had bought for a song the
kegs of gold the Danes had covered with tallow as a
disguise when they were driven out of Ireland, and
who had been rich and a miser ever after. I did not
mean this old man, Darner, to appear at all. He was to
be as invisible as that Heaven of which we are told
the violent take it by force. My intention at first
was that he should be robbed, but then I saw robbery
would take too much sympathy from my young lad,
and I decided the money should be won by the lesser
sin of cardplaying, but still behind the scenes. Then
I thought it would have a good stage effect if old
Darner could just walk once across the stage in the

Notes 161

background. His relations might have come into
the house to try and make themselves agreeable to
him, and he would appear and they would vanish.
. . . Darner comes in, and contrary to my intention,
he begins to find a tongue of his own. He has made
his start in the world, and has more than a word to
say. How that play will work out I cannot be sure,
or if it will ever be finished at all. But if ever it is
I am quite sure it will go as Darner wants, not as I
want.

That is what I said last winter, and now in harvest
time the play is all but out of my hands. But as I
foretold, Darner has taken possession of it, turning it
to be as simple as a folk-tale, where the innocent of
the world confound the wisdom of the wise. The idea
with which I set out has not indeed quite vanished,
but is as if "extinct and pale; not darkness, but light
that has become dead."

As to Darner's changes of mood, it happened a little
time ago, when the play was roughly written, but on
its present lines, that I took up a volume of Montaigne,
and found in it his justification by high examples :

"Verilie it is not want but rather plentie that
causeth avarice. I will speake of mine owne experi-
ence concerning this subject. I have lived in three
kinds of condition since I came out of my infancie.
The first time, which continued well nigh twentie
yeares, I have past it over as one who had no other
means but casual without any certaine maintenance
or regular prescription. My expenses were so much

1 62 Notes

the more carelessly laid out and lavishly employed,
by how much more they wholly depended on fortunes
rashnesse and exhibition. I never lived so well at
ease. . . . My second manner of life hath been to
have monie: which when I had once fingred, according
to my condition I sought to hoorde up some against
a rainy day. . . . My minde was ever on my halfe-
penny; my thoughts ever that way. Of commoditie
I had little or nothing. . . . And after you are once
accustomed, and have fixed your thoughts upon a
heape of monie, it is no longer at your service; you
dare not diminish it; it is a building which if you
touch or take any part from it, you will think it will
all fall. And I should sooner pawne my clothes or
sell a horse, with lesse care and compulsion than make
a breach into that beloved purse which I kept in
store. ... I was some yeares of the same humour:
I wot not what good Demon did most profitably
remove me from it, like to the Siracusan, and made me
to neglect my sparing. ... I live from hand to
mouth, from day to day, and have I but to supplie
my present and ordinarie needs I am satisfied. . . .
And I singularly gratifie myself this correction came
upon me in an age naturally inclined to covetousnesse,
and that I am free from that folly so common and
peculiar to old men, and the most ridiculous of all
humane follies. Feraulez who had passed through
both fortunes and found that encrease of goods was
no encrease of appetite to eat, to sleepe or to embrace
his wife ; and who on the other side felt heavily on his
shoulders the importunitie of ordering and directing

Notes 163

his Oeconomicall affairs as it doth on mine, deter-
mined with himselfe to content a poore young man,
his faithfull friend, greedily gaping after riches, and
frankly made him a present donation of all his great
and excessive riches, always provided hee should
undertake to entertaine and find him, honestly and
in good sort, as his guest and friend. In which
estate they lived afterwards most happily and mu-
tually content with the change of their condition."
And so I hope it may come to pass with the re-
maining years of Simon and of Darner.

McDONOUGH'S WIFE

In my childhood there was every year at my old
home, Roxborough, or, as it is called in Irish, Cre-
groostha, a great sheep-shearing that lasted many days.
On the last evening there was always a dance for the
shearers and their helpers, and two pipers used to
sit on chairs placed on a corn-bin to make music for
the dance. One of them was always McDonough.
He was the best of all the wandering pipers who went
about from house to house. When, at my marriage,
I moved from the barony of Dunkellin to the neigh-
bouring barony of Kiltartan, he came and played at
the dance given to the tenants in my honour, and he
came and played also at my son's coming of age.
Not long after that he died. The last time I saw him
he came to ask for a loan of money to take the train
to Ennis, where there was some fair or gathering of
people going on, and I would not lend to so old a friend,

164 Notes

but gave him a half-sovereign, and we parted with
kindly words. He was so great a piper that in the
few years since his death myths have already begun
to gather around him. I have been told that his
father was taken into a hill of the Danes, the Tuatha
de Danaan, the ancient invisible race, and they had
taught him all their tunes and so bewitched his pipes
that they would play of themselves if he threw them
up on the rafters. McDonough's pipes, they say,
had not that gift, but he himself could play those
inspired tunes. Lately I was told the story I have
used in this play about his taking away fifty sovereigns
from the shearing at Cregroostha and spending them
at a village near. "I said to him," said the old man
who told me this, "that it would be better for him
to have bought a good kitchen of bacon; but he said,
'Ah, when I want more, I have but to squeeze the
pipes." ' The story of his wife's death and burial
as I give it has been told to me here and there. That
is my fable, and the emotion disclosed by the story is,
I think, the lasting pride of the artist of all ages:

"We are the music makers
And we are the dreamers of dreams. . . .
We in the ages lying
In the buried past of the earth
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
And Babel itself with our mirth."

I wrote the little play while crossing the Atlantic
in the Cymric last September. Since it was written

Notes

165

I have been told at Kin vara that "McDonough was
a proud man ; he never would go to a wedding unasked,
and he never would play through a town." So he had
laid down pride for pride's sake, at that time of the
burying of his wife.

In Galway this summer one who was with him at
the end told me he had a happy death, "But he died
poor ; for what he would make in the long nights he
would spend through the summer days." And then
she said, "Himself and Reilly and three other fine
pipers died within that year. There was surely a
feast of music going on in some other place."

Dates of production of plays.

The Bogie Men was first produced at the Court
Theatre, London, July 8, 1912, with the following
cast :

Taig O'Harragha
Darby Melody

J. M. Kerrigan
J. A. O'Rourke

The Full Moon was first produced at the Abbey
Theatre, Dublin, on November 10, 19 10, with the
following cast:
Shawn Early . . . -J- O'Rourke

Bartley Fallon
Peter Tannian
Hyacinth Halvey
Mrs. Broderick
Miss Joyce .
Cracked Mary
Davideen

Arthur Sinclair

Sidney Morgan

Fred. 0' Donovan

. Sara Allgood

Eileen O'Doherty

Maire O'Neill

. J. M. Kerrigan

1 66

Notes

Coats was first produced at the Abbey Theatre,
Dublin, December, 1910, with the following cast:

Mineog
Hazel .
John

Arthur Sinclair
J. M. Kerrigan
J. A. O'Rourke

Damer's Gold was first produced at the Abbey
Theatre November 21, 1912, with the following cast:

Delia Hessian
Staff y Kirwan
Ralph Hessian
Darner
Simon Niland

. Sara Allgood
Sidney Morgan
J. M. Kerrigan

Arthur Sinclair
A. Wright

McDonough 's Wife has not yet been produced by
the Abbey Company.

Jl Selection from the
Catalogue of

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

Complete Catalogue sent
on application

Irish Folk-History Plays

By
LADY GREGORY

First Series, The Tragedies
GRANIA KINCORA DERVORGILLA

Second Series. The Tragic Comedies

THE CANAVANS THE WHITE COCKADE

THE DELIVERER

2 vols. Each, $1.50 net. By mail, $1.65

Lady Gregory has preferred going for her material to the tra-
ditional folk-history rather than to the authorized printed versions,
and she has been able, in so doing, to make her plays more living.
One of these, K'tncora, telling of Brian Boru, who reigned in the
year iooo, evoked such keen local interest that an old farmer
travelled from the neighborhood of Kincora to see it acted in
Dublin.

The story of Grania. on which Lady Gregory has founded one
of these plays, was taken entirely from tradition. Grania was a
beautiful young woman and was to have been married to Finn, the
great leader of the Fenians; but before the marriage, she went
away from the bridegroom with his handsome young kinsman,
Diarmuid. After many years, when Diarmuid had died (and Finn
had a hand in his death), she went back to Finn and became his
queen.

Another of Lady Gregory's plays, The Canavans dealt with
the stormy times of Queen Elizabeth, whose memory is a horror in
Ireland second only to that of Cromwell.

The White Cockade is founded on a tradition of King James
having escaped from Ireland after the battle of the Boyne in a wine
barrel.

The choice of folk history rather than written history gives a
freshness of treatment and elasticity of material which made the
late J. M. Synge say that " Lady Gregory's method had brought
back the possibility of writing historic plays."

All these plays, except Grania, which has not yet been staged,
have been very successfully performed in Ireland. They are written
in the dialect of Kiltartan, which had already become familiar to
readers of Lady Gregory's books.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

Irish Folk-History Plays

By

LADY GREGORY

Lady Gregory's plays " never fail to do the one thing
which we all demand from a play, which is not, as stupid
people say, to amuse us (though Lady Gregory's plays
are extremely amusing) , but to take us out of ourselves
and out of London and out of the stuffy theater while we
are listening to them." — George Bernard Shaw.

"Among the three great exponents of the modern Celtic
movement in Ireland, Lady Gregory holds an unusual
place. It is she from whom came the chief historical im-
pulse which resulted in the re-creation for the present
generation of the elemental poetry of early Ireland, its
wild disorders, its loves and hates — all the passionate
light and shadow of that fierce and splendid race.
. . . Should be read by all those who are interested in
this most unusual literary movement of modern times.
Indeed they furnish a necessary complement to the over-
fanciful pictures drawn by Mr. Yeats of the dim morning
of Celtic Song." — Springfield Republican.

"Lady Gregory has kept alive the tradition of Ireland
as a laughing country. She surpasses the others in the
quality of her comedy, however, not that she is more
comic, but that she is more comprehensively true to life.
Lady Gregory has gone to reality as to a cave of treasure.
She is one of the discoverers of Ireland. Her genius, like
Synge's, seems to have opened its eyes one day and seen
spread below it the immense sea of Irish common speech,
with its color, its laughter, and its music." — Nation.

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS

NEW YORK LONDON

The Nun of Kent

Dramas of Importance

Plays

The Silver Box— Joy— Strife

By John Galsworthy

Author of " The Country House," etc.
Grown 8vo. $1 .35 net

" By common consent, London has witnessed this week
a play of serious importance, not approached by any other
book or drama of the season, John Galsworthy's 'The
Strife.' It is regarded not merely as a remarkable social
document of significance, but as a creation which, while of
the most modern realism, is yet classic in its pronounced
art and exalted philosophy. The play shows the types of
the strongest men# as victims of comical events and of
weaker men. It will be produced in America, where, on
account of its realistic treatment of the subject of labor
union, it is sure to be a sensation." — Special cable dispatch
to N. Y. Times.

A

Drama
By Grace Denio Litchfield

Author of "Baldur the Beautiful," etc.
Crown 8 vo. $ 1 .00 net

" In this drama the pure essentials of dramatic writing
are rarely blended. # . . . The foundation for the stirring
play is a pathetic episode given in Froude's Henry VIII. . . .

" The lines of the poem, while full of thought, are also
characterized by fervor and beauty. The strength of the
play is centred upon a few characters. . . . ' The Nun
of Kent ' may be described as a fascinating dramatic
story." — Baltimore News.

Yzdra

A Tragedy in Three Acts

By Louis V. Ledoux

Crown 8vo, Cloth. $1.25 net

" There are both grace and strength in this drama and
it also possesses the movement and spirit needed for pres-
entation upon the stage. Some of the figures used are
striking and beautiful, quite free from excess, and some-
times almost austere in their restraint. The characters
are clearly individualized and a just balance is preserved
in the action." — The Outlook, New York.

New York G. P. Putnam's Sons London

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